Delhi High Court refuses to stay contempt powers of Armed Forces Tribunal 

The Delhi High Court has refused to stay the Full Bench judgment of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), which had held that the tribunal possesses powers of contempt to get its orders implemented in case of wilful non-compliance by the government.

The AFT’s larger Bench was constituted when a two-member Bench at Delhi had expressed apprehensions in following a judgment of the Kerala High Court, which had directed the Kochi Bench to invoke powers of contempt in case of non-compliance by defence authorities.

In a landmark judgment running into more than 500 pages, the longest in the AFT’s history, the larger Bench had interpreted the law to hold that the legislature did not intend keeping the AFT toothless.

It had observed that more than 5,000 of the tribunal's orders were lying unimplemented even though there was no stay on them from a high court or the Supreme Court.

The AFT judgment was challenged before the Delhi High Court through a writ petition filed by the Union Government, but the Bench questioned the government counsel whether the Army had filed the petition with the specific approval of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) or not.

The high court also directed that a specific affidavit be filed by the Defence Secretary whether approval of the ministry had been taken or not before challenging the AFT order.

While adjourning the matter to October, the high court made it clear that it was not issuing a notice in the matter or staying the judgment and directed that the AFT should continue hearing contempt proceedings.

In the past, the Supreme Court as well as various high courts have passed strong observations against the MoD for filing frivolous appeals against disabled personnel and other pensioners in matters where the law has already been settled.

The Delhi High Court has dismissed close to 400 petitions filed by the MoD and Army authorities in pension matters in August. The Punjab and Haryana High Court also dismissed many cases the same month.

Veterans’ organisations and lawyers have pointed out that since late 2023 the MoD and the defence services were flooding the courts with thousands of cases against military pensioners, including those on the same subjects which were withdrawn from courts on orders of the then Defence Ministers Manohar Parrikar and Nirmala Sitharaman.

Earlier this month, an ex-servicemen's organisation had written to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh asking him to take steps to end the practice and control unnecessary litigation.