NEW INDIA ASSURANCE CO LTD Vs. KASHMIRI LAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This writ petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India arose from an execution of an award in favour of the claimant in a motor accident case and discloses a tortuous route a motor accident victim as a claimant has to follow in order to recover dues by being driven to the resort to the provisions of Section 174 of the Motor Vehicles Act (hereinafter referred to as the Act). In so far as the petition on merits is concerned, it related to a penalty imposed on petitioner No. 2 who is the Regional Manager of the petitioner No. 1 company, who in the writ petition has inter alia averred that it is a government owned nationalized insurance company and that part of the matter has already been decided as the penalty imposed has been waived by this Court by its order dated 12th August, 2005. However, since the recovery of the awarded amount to the legal heirs of the motor accident claimant or the claimant itself takes considerable time inspite of awards of Motor Accidents Claim Tribunals (hereinafter referred to as MACT) in the claimants' favour, this Court had appointed Mr. Ashok Chhabra as Amicus Curiae and he has ably assisted this Court to enable this Court to issue general directions to all Motor Accident Claims Tribunals in Delhi. The Court has also received able assistance from the learned counsel for petitioner No. 1 company, Mr. P.K. Seth.

(2.) The submission made by Mr. Chhabra disclosed that even after an award is passed in favour of a party under Section 168 of the Act, an insurance company takes considerable time in making payment even though a large number of them are public sector companies. Section 168(d) of the Act reads as under:

(3.) Even though the amount awarded by the MACT as per the mandate of Section 168(3) is required to be deposited within thirty days of announcing the award, this stipulated period of 30 days under Section 168(3) has been completely eroded in practice. The tortuous route of Section 174 of the Act has thus to be resorted to routinely by the claimants and the recovery eventually depends upon the interest if any taken by the Collector to recover the awarded amount from insurer as arrears of land revenue under Section 174 of the Act which reads as follows:-