T.S. PUSHPAMMA W/O. (LATE) PONNAPPAN, Vs. A. SAIFUDEEN, MANAGING PARTNER AND THE ORIENTAL INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) WIFE and two minor children of a deceased are the appellants before us. The deceased suffered injuries in a motor accident which took place on 26/7/2002 and succumbed to those injuries immediately. He was a fisherman by avocation. The tribunal, on an anxious consideration of all the relevant inputs, came to the conclusion that the appellants are entitled to a total amount of Rs. 2,46,000/ - as compensation as per the details shown below:

(2.) THE appellants/claimants claim to be aggrieved by the impugned award. What is their grievance? Called upon to explain the nature of challenge which the appellants want to mount against the impugned award, the learned Counsel for the appellants first of all contends that the award of interest @ 6% p.a. is perversely low and painfully inadequate. Relying on the decision in Dharampal v. U.P State Road Transport Corporation : 2008 (2) KLT 691(SC) the learned Counsel contends and we agree that interest must have been awarded atleast @ 7.5% p.a. from the date of the petition to the date of payment.

(3.) THE learned Counsel for the appellant has trained all his guns against the reckoning of Rs. 1,800/ - p.m. as the monthly income of the deceased. He relies on the certificate Ext.A10 issued by the employer of the deceased to show that he was getting an average of Rs. 6,400/ - p.m. The tribunal did not attach any significance or importance to that document. The same has not been proved satisfactorily. The learned Counsel for the appellants contends that even if the income certificate be eschewed from consideration, we have satisfactory evidence to show that the deceased was a fisherman by profession. Ext.A9 shows that he was a subscriber to the Kerala Matsya Thozhilali Kshema Nidhi. The learned Counsel for the appellants further points out that the deceased was the sole earning member of a family consisting of himself, his wife and his two children. They were living with the income derived by the deceased. Reasonable inference can be drawn on the probable monthly income even from that output. The accident had taken place on 26/7/2002. It is further pointed out that as early as in 1994, in a claim under Section 163A, the legislature in the second schedule permits a presumption of prudence to be drawn that even a non -earning person can be assumed to draw an income of Rs. 1,250/ - p.m. We are satisfied, in these circumstances, that an amount of Rs. 2,500/ - p.m. can safely be assumed to be the irreducible minimum monthly income of the deceased notwithstanding the absence of authentic evidence to prove the actual precise monthly income.