The Punjab and Haryana High Court has dismissed a plea by the Union of India and upheld the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT ) order granting disability pension to army personnel even if the medical assessment places the disability at less than the standard 20 per cent threshold. A bench of Justices Harsimran Singh Sethi and Deepak Manchanda was acting on a plea of the Union of India seeking to deny disability pension to a member of the armed forces discharged from duty due to medical reasons and challenging the AFT ’s 2019 order. “Since the reason for being relieved from service is the disability aggravated during the service period, the contention of the petitioner that the benefit of disability pension could not be granted to the respondent cannot be accepted,” the court observed on May 1. The bench said that the state has not been able to rebut the fact that while suffering from the disability, the officer could not have continued in service.…