Disability-pension arrears claims must be decided on their individual merits, not mechanically extended.

The Union of India sought clarification of the Supreme Court’s common judgment dated 12 February 2026 in Union of India Through Its Secretary & Ors. v. Sgt Girish Kumar & Ors., which dismissed the Union’s appeals and allowed the ex-servicemen’s appeals, granting disability pension with broad-banding from the applicable date and interest at 6% per annum.

The Union submitted that the beneficiaries in those appeals already received disability pension and sought only its recomputation, and that the judgment was being invoked in other cases where entitlement to pension itself had been disputed or where earlier orders had attained finality.

The respondents accepted that the arrears granted in the common judgment concerned ex-servicemen already receiving disability pension, while contending that delay must be assessed in light of the parties’ conduct and the procedural history of each case.

1. Whether the common judgment should be clarified to prevent it from being mechanically extended to every pensionary claim, including cases where entitlement to disability pension was itself disputed.

2. Whether the common judgment unsettled the principles governing stale or belated pensionary claims.

Judicial observations are not to be read as statutory provisions or divorced from the facts and context in which they were made; differences in facts may materially affect a decision’s precedential value.

The Court relied on State of Orissa v. Sudhansu Sekhar Misra, AIR 1968 SC 647, and State of Uttar Pradesh & Anr. v. Mohd. Arshad Khan & Anr., (2026) 6 SCC 383, for these principles.

The Court cited no statutory provision and did not lay down a general rule resolving limitation in all disability-pension claims.

The Court considered the Union’s concern that the common judgment was being relied on in cases materially different from the appeals it had decided, as well as the respondents’ submission that delay must be considered in the circumstances of each case.

Applying the rule that a judgment must be understood in its factual context, the Court clarified that the common judgment—concerning the claims before it—could not be treated as establishing an entitlement to disability pension with arrears in every case.

The merits of each claim therefore remained to be assessed individually.

It condoned the delay in filing the miscellaneous application and disposed of it.