NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY LTD Vs. GUNJA RAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The present appeal under Sec. 173 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 ('the Act'), preferred by the insurer, seeks to assail the award dtd. 10/11/2022 passed by the learned Motor Accidents Claim Tribunal in MACT No. 299/2021. Vide the impugned award the learned Tribunal, while holding that the death of Shri Chandramohan Raiwas was the result of an accident which took place at Ahirauli Chatti, Ghaziabad due to rash and negligent driving of a truck insured by the appellant, driven by respondent no.6, has awarded a sum of Rs.59,00,000.00 as compensation to the claimants.

(2.) This compensation awarded by the learned Tribunal includes a sum of Rs.56,70,000.00 towards loss of dependency, by treating the monthly income of the deceased as Rs.30,000.00. While holding that the monthly income of the deceased was required to be taken as Rs.30,000.00, the learned Tribunal took into account the fact that the deceased was a qualified Homeopath holding a degree of Bachelor in Homeopathic medicine and Surgery with 10 years of practice. To arrive to this conclusion, the learned Tribunal relied on the uncontroverted testimony of PW1, the widow of the deceased, who, by producing the register of patients maintained by her late husband, stated that he was earning an amount of at least Rs.50,000.00 per month. The relevant findings of the learned Tribunal on this aspect read as under:

(3.) Being aggrieved, the present appeal has been preferred by the insurer on two grounds. The first and foremost being that the claim petition itself was not maintainable before the tribunal for want of territorial jurisdiction. The second being that the monthly income of the deceased ought to have been taken as the minimum wages of a skilled workman and not Rs.30,000.00-, as presumed by the learned Tribunal.