Armed Forces Tribunal has power to initiate contempt proceedings, rules larger bench

Marathon hearings were held in the case in April and May this year with Additional Solicitor General Vikramjit Banerjee along with Anil Gautam representing the Government and Colonel Rajiv Manglik (retd) representing the litigants. The court had appointed lawyers Rajshekhar Rao and Navdeep Singh from the Delhi and the Punjab and Haryana High Courts respectively to assist the larger bench as amici curiae.

In the judgment running into more than 500 pages, perhaps the longest in the AFT’s history, the larger bench has interpreted Section 29 of the AFT Act and Rule 25 of the AFT Rules to hold that the legislature did not intend keeping the AFT toothless.

It observed that more than 5,000 of its orders are lying unimplemented without any stay from the high court or the Supreme Court. The bunch matter referred to the larger bench included cases filed by Lt Col (later Colonel) Mukul Dev in the year 2014 at the Kolkata Bench and suo motu contempt proceedings initiated by the Chandigarh Bench.

It may be recalled that in the past, the Punjab and Haryana Court has come down heavily upon the MoD for non-implementation of the orders of the AFT. The Supreme Court and various high courts have also passed strong observations against MoD for filing frivolous appeals against disabled personnel and other pensioners in settled matters. The approach of the MoD has also been criticized by the Government’s own panels and committees.

Veteran organisations and lawyers point out that since late 2023 the MoD and the defence services are flooding all high courts and the Supreme Court with thousands of cases against military pensioners, including on same subjects which were withdrawn from Courts on orders of the then Defence Ministers Manohar Parrikar and Nirmala Sitharaman.

Lawyers point out on the condition of anonymity that writ petitions and appeals being filed by the MoD and the defence services are affecting the resources of the government and the Army disproportionately and are burdening the exchequer with high litigation costs besides clogging the courts all over the country with frivolous cases against a vulnerable section of the society such as disabled veterans and widows, also resulting in discontentment amongst the military community.