Centre against raising Army doctors’ retirement age to 65

R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, August 13

The Centre is against increasing the retirement age of Army doctors to 65 years in line with the new age limit for their civilian counterparts.

“The Army always has its own retirement age for its personnel from time immemorial,” Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Maninder Singh pleaded with the Supreme Court yesterday.

The Centre took the stand before a Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra which was hearing a PIL by some of the doctors who retired last month after being denied the benefit of a recent government notification on the new retirement age for civilian doctors.

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The ASG also pleaded that retirement age was a service issue for which the doctors had no right to approach the apex court directly. The proper forum for resolving the controversy was the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), he said.

Other affected doctors had already approached the AFT, New Delhi, and as such the petitioners in the SC should be directed to join the litigation pending with the AFT, Singh pleaded.

Accepting the Centre’s plea, the Bench asked the petitioners to approach the AFT. The apex court directed the tribunal to dispose of the case expeditiously, preferably in three months.

On July 29, the Bench had asked the Centre to respond within two days to Army doctors’ plea for enhancing their retirement age to 65.

The petitioners from the Army Medical Corps (AMC) had pleaded that the Centre had enhanced the retirement age of non-teaching civilian doctors to 65 years, but the Defence Ministry was not extending the benefit to the Army where doctors retired at 60 or 62, depending upon their rank.

However, other government wings such as paramilitary forces had decided to follow the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) decision to retire doctors at 65 years of age from May 31 this year.

If the Army was not willing to retain them, they should be transferred to other departments facing shortage of doctors so that they could continue to serve till 65, they pleaded.

The Centre’s move to increase the retirement age has come at the instance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for making use the services of experienced doctors for the benefit of the poor.