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New Delhi: Thousands of soldiers and veterans are waiting years for their service and pension disputes to be resolved, but the numbers cited in parliament understate how big the backlog really is. The military is publicly feted and celebrated, but the everyday disputes of soldiers and veterans languish unresolved.

This came to light when RTI activist and director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Venkatesh Nayak compared year-wise case figures tabled by the Union law ministry for the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) in Parliament with records he obtained directly from the tribunal under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Image 1: Parliament response by ministry of law and justice to pending and disposed cases in tribunals; December 5, 2025 in Lok Sabha. Serial No. 13 relates to the Armed Forces Tribunal. Source: Lok Sabha Q&A, Winter Session, 2025

Data shared by the law ministry in parliament on December 5, 2025, showed 6,904 cases pending before the AFT in 2025 (image 1, above). The RTI application filed by Nayak, eliciting records from the same tribunal, shows a cumulative pendency of nearly 28,000 cases as of September 2025 (see image 3 above).

The backlog matters because the AFT adjudicates service disputes, pensions, disability claims and court-martial appeals: prolonged pendency means delayed outcomes that directly impact soldiers, veterans and their families.

Both the scale of the backlog uncovered by Nayak and its impact become clearer over time. Parliamentary records show that the AFT had 18,829 pending cases in February 2021, but that figure has risen steadily since then. All this time, official replies in parliament presented only limited, year-wise snapshots of the pending cases – rather than cumulative totals.

Image 2: Cumulative pendency at the Armed Forces Tribunal. Source: Lok Sabha Q&A, ministry of defence response, March 10, 2021.

This has even led to confusion in the press about the actual status of cases waiting in the AFT. Some media outlets have reported the number from December 5, 2025 (6,904 pending cases) as the cumulative total – when the actual cumulative backlog is roughly four times higher (see image 2, above: parliament response; and image 3, below: AFT’s response).

There is a gap in the data presented in parliament because the law ministry’s replies only share year-wise disposal and pending figures from 2020 onwards. The replies do not........

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