Vijay Mohan.Tribune News Service,Chandigarh, February 16

The Supreme Court has issued notice to the Central Government on a petition filed by the father of a fighter pilot killed during the 1999 Kargil operations, challenging the constitutional validity of certain provisions in the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) Act which virtually debar the litigants from appealing against the Tribunal orders.Sections 30 and 31 of the AFT Act, which do not permit filing of appeals except in cases involving a “point of law of general public importance”, are in sharp contrast with the rights available to all civilian employees, who can approach the High Court and then the Supreme Court against orders passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal.Gurbax Singh Dhindsa, father of Late Flying Officer GS Dhindsa, who died in a crash at Srinagar when the fighter aircraft had been scrambled for a live mission during Operation Vijay, had been refused the correct pension by the Defence Accounts Department. Though the AFT granted him his entitlement, it refused to grant him interest from the date of death.When the petitioner wanted to approach the High Court for interest, he learnt that the HCs had been barred from entertaining challenges to AFT orders by an SC verdict of March 2015, passed on a plea filed by the Central Government in 2011. Further, the SC could only hear appeals concerned with ‘general public importance’.The petitioner contended that provisions of the Act have rendered the AFT as the first and the last court for litigants without any remedy or access against its orders, thereby leaving litigants at a serious disadvantage.