SC dismisses PIL on Army chief's age

Observing that “we are not going to fix the retirement age of anyone”, the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a public interest suit on the age of retirement of the chief of Army staff, Gen V K Singh.

“This is purely a service matter; there is a limit to all these,” a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia observed. There is a separate petition on the issue, filed by Gen Singh himself last week. It is likely to be heard next week.

The public interest suit was filed earlier and was from a Grenadiers Association (Rohtak Chapter).

While dismissing it, the judges strongly objected to the petitioner attaching the opinions of four former Chief Justices of India to buttress its arguments. These opinions had come with caveats that these should not be used in court; even so, the opinions were attached.

“It was most inappropriate,” the bench said. Its dismissal order also bars the SC registry from accepting any such petitions in future, which contain opinions of former CJIs.

The order also clarified that the petition was dismissed as not maintainable and the court had not gone into the merits of the case. It might have been maintainable, the judges said, if the person affected had directly come to court. This was not so and if an adverse order was passed in a any public interest litigation, the person affected would in a difficult position. It would be a “travesty of justice” if the court passed an order about a person who was not before it, the judges said.

Bhim Singh, counsel for the petitioner, had contended it was a serious matter when the ministries of law and defence differed on an important issue. “If the government could change a date of birth, tomorrow it may also change the dates of birth of judges,” he argued. He said the fate of 10 million government employees were involved, including a million soldiers.