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New Delhi: Right to Information responses sent by the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) to RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak reveal that the total number of cases pending before all its 11 benches is nearly 38,000 – way higher than the 6,904 pending cases the Union government declared in parliament on December 5, 2025.

The AFT adjudicates disputes related to service matters, pensions, disability claims and court-martial appeals. Therefore, the high number of cases pending with it means that as many soldiers have been waiting for their pension and other disputes to be resolved – sometimes for years.

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s  (CHRI) director and RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak found in responses to his queries to the AFT that if total pending cases across all benches and over two decades were added up, the number reaches 37,864. This figure is not just substantially higher than what the Union government declared but also higher than the AFT’s own declaration just a few months earlier, in another set of RTI responses to Nayak.

The mismatch between the figures of the Union government and the AFT came to light in December 2025, when the tribunal’s Central Public Information Officer, in RTI responses to Nayak, said the pendency was 27,962 cases as of September, 2025. The Wire had first reported the inconsistencies in AFT’s pendency........

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