Supreme Court: a precedent must be read on its own facts, not applied as a blanket rule

The Supreme Court clarified its own earlier common judgment of 12 February 2026, which had held ex-servicemen entitled to disability pension with a 'broad-banding' benefit and interest, after the Union Government complained that High Courts and the Armed Forces Tribunal were mechanically extending that judgment to dozens of unrelated pending cases, including ones where entitlement itself was still disputed rather than merely its re-computation. Hearing a miscellaneous application in Civil Appeal Nos. 6820-6824 of 2018 (Union of India v. Sgt. Girish Kumar & Ors.), a bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe, on 12 October 2026, clarified that the February judgment cannot be read to mean that every disability-pension claim must succeed; each claim still has to be examined and decided on its own facts.

Reiterating the settled rule that judicial observations are not to be read in the abstract, like a statutory provision divorced from the facts before the court, the Court relied on its earlier rulings in State of Orissa v. Sudhansu Sekhar Misra and State of U.P. v. Mohd. Arshad Khan, and disposed of the application accordingly, without disturbing the February judgment's actual conclusion.