Supreme Court awards Rs 1.25 crore to blind CRPF driver invalidated in breach of Section 47
A Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Augustine George Masih held the CRPF breached Section 47 of the PwD Act, awarding a visually impaired driver Rs 1.25 crore in lieu of reinstatement.
A CRPF driver who lost vision in one eye and suffered partial impairment in the other was medically invalidated from service in 1998, at a time when Section 47 of the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 barred any establishment from dispensing with an employee acquiring a disability during service. The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered on 13 July 2026 by Justice Dipankar Datta for a Bench also comprising Justice Augustine George Masih, dismissed the Union of India’s appeal and held the force had breached its statutory duty. Because the respondent had crossed the age of superannuation, the Court declined reinstatement but ordered payment of Rs 1,25,00,000, inclusive of back wages, interest and costs. The ruling turns on when the duty under Section 47 attaches, the effect of a later exemption notification, and whether a disabled employee unaware of his rights can be said to have waived them.
How the dispute reached the Court
The respondent was enrolled in the CRPF as a Constable (Driver) in 1985 after being found medically fit. In 1996 he developed an ophthalmic condition — Disseminated Choroiditis and Retinal Atrophic Patches with Macular Involvement — causing complete blindness in the left eye and partial loss of vision in the right.
The Medical Invalidation Board at the Base Hospital, CRPF, Hyderabad, found him permanently incapacitated and unfit for further service in any capacity. He was medically invalidated by an order dated 11 March 1998. A representation of 15 October 2000 was rejected.
An earlier writ petition led to reconsideration, but the appellants again rejected his claim on 27 June 2005, holding his ailment was not attributable to or aggravated by service and granting only a lump-sum of Rs 15,000.
He then filed a fresh writ petition seeking disability pension and a declaration that the invalidation orders were void. A Single Judge of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh allowed it on 11 August 2008, invoking Section 47 of the PwD Act and the decisions in Kunal Singh v. Union of India and Bhagwan Dass v. Punjab State Electricity Board, and directing reinstatement with consequential benefits. The Division Bench dismissed the appellants’ Letters Patent Appeal on 23 December 2014 after nearly seven years. The Union came to the Supreme Court under Article 136; leave was granted and the impugned judgment stayed on 23 November 2015.
What the Court held on Section 47
The Court framed the question as whether the Single Judge rightly enforced the appellants’ duty under Section 47 and whether the Division Bench was wrong not to reverse that direction. It found the statutory mandate “too peremptory to be ignored,” noting that Section 47 opens with the word “No,” a legislative device making the provision imperative.
Under the scheme, an employee acquiring a disability during service must be shifted to a post carrying the same pay and benefits; if that is not possible, adjusted against another post; and failing that, kept on a supernumerary post until superannuation. The Court held the appellants were required to find a chair for the respondent, “and not wait for the respondent to beg for one.”
The Court drew directly on Kunal Singh, the first decision on the contours of Section 47, which held the provision mandatory and imposing a positive obligation on the employer to shift a disabled employee without waiting to be asked. It noted that receipt of invalidity pension under the CCS (Pension) Rules is no ground to deny Section 47 protection, the Act being a special enactment attracting generalia specialibus non derogant.
The notification of 2002 and its prospective operation
The appellants relied on a notification dated 10 September 2002 by which the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, exercising the proviso to Section 47, exempted all combatant personnel of the Central Para Military Forces, including the CRPF, from the provision. They cited Union of India v. Dileep Kumar Singh, where the notification was upheld.
The Court disagreed that the notification helped the appellants. Applying settled rules that delegated legislation is ordinarily prospective, that an exemption notification without express retrospective intent operates prospectively, and that an exemption from a beneficial statute must be strictly construed, it held the notification had no bearing on the 1998 invalidation.
The invalidation of 11 March 1998 was made when Section 47 operated “without any strings attached.” That order was held ultra vires Section 47 read with Articles 14 and 21, and void ab initio; a later exemption could not efface a breach already committed. The Court observed that the very issuance of the notification seven years after the Act showed Section 47 applied with full force to the CPMFs between 1995 and 10 September 2002. Dileep Kumar Singh was distinguished, the employee there having been relieved in 2011, after the notification.
Waiver and the limits of pleadings in writ jurisdiction
The appellants argued waiver, contending the respondent never sought relief under Section 47 or reinstatement, confining his claim to disability pension. The Court rejected this. Waiver requires an intentional relinquishment of a known right, and the Single Judge had recorded, unchallenged, that the respondent had no knowledge of his Section 47 entitlement. The second and third elements of waiver were absent, and no plea of waiver had been pleaded in the LPA or the appeal.
The Court noted the absence of pleadings invoking the PwD Act in the writ petition, but observed that the appellants had never raised, in the LPA or before the Supreme Court, any ground that the Single Judge travelled beyond the pleadings. It used the occasion to state that writ jurisdiction under Article 226 is a “reservoir of equity,” and that where the record shows clear entitlement to wider relief withheld only through ignorance or inelegant drafting, and the opponent is put on notice and suffers no prejudice, a court may grant such relief — an exception to be sparingly invoked. It also referred to Ravinder Kumar Dhariwal v. Union of India on reasonable accommodation and substantive equality.
On attribution and the model employer
The Court held that whether the impaired vision was attributable to service did not matter, since Parliament did not limit Section 47 to service-related disabilities; the protection is unqualified and operates irrespective of how the disability was acquired. It found more than ten years of unblemished driving followed by an acquired condition made a case for accommodation, not invalidation.
It described the CRPF, an instrumentality of the State under the Ministry of Home Affairs, as expected to be cognizant of the PwD Act, and found it difficult to comprehend how the invalidation order came to be passed when no exemption notification then existed.
Order
By an interim order of 20 May 2026 the Court had directed the appellants to place on record the salary and allowances the respondent would have drawn until superannuation. The calculation sheet showed Rs 82,80,195 excluding adjustment for invalidation pension, and Rs 2,66,180 had he continued only up to 10 September 2002. The Court declined the appellants’ prayer to limit relief to the latter sum.
Holding the respondent, now a sexagenarian, entitled to full back wages and rejecting reliance on “no work, no pay,” the Court modified the Single Judge’s order and awarded Rs 1,25,00,000, inclusive of back wages, interest and costs, to be transferred electronically within eight weeks. The respondent’s advocate-on-record was directed to furnish bank details within seven days.
Given the respondent’s visual impairment, the Court directed the Member-Secretary of the Himachal Pradesh State Legal Services Authority or the Kangra District Legal Services Authority to guide him on safe investment of part of the amount and to oversee his future medical needs. The civil appeal was dismissed on these terms.