G LAKSHMAMMA Vs. GAYARANGA DEY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These cases raise an important question relating to the power of the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal after judgment, to withhold and invest monies payable to adult-claimants for a specified period or periods. In some of the cases under appeal before us, the Tribunal has, following the decision of K. Ramaswamy, J. (as he then was) in New India Assurance Co. Ltd. vs. Madapati Naramma, directed deposit of the amounts payable to adults, in nationalised banks. When the insurance company or the owners of the motor-vehicles had preferred appeals in this Court and prayed for stay, counsel for the respondent-claimants have pleaded for release of the whole or part of the award amount. In the view that if such a request is accepted, it will run counter to the judgment of Ramaswamy, J. (as he then was) the learned single Judges (Eswara Prasad, J. in some cases) and one of us (P.L.N. Sarma, J. in some other cases) have referred the miscellaneous petitions for decision to a Division Bench. In some cases, having regard to the higher pecuniary value, the interlocutory applications themselves are before us in the Division Bench.

(2.) We have heard almost all the standing counsel for the insurance companies and counsel for the owners of the vehicles as also counsel for claimants in general and are disposing some of the cases by this judgment. We shall pass orders separately in other cases. Generally, the counsel on both sides did not, before us, seriously object to the retention of monies but requested us to reduce the rigour and hardship that some times the judgment in Naramma's case (1 supra) is likely to produce and requested that the guidelines may be modified. The counsel for the insurance companies contended that there is ample power in the Court to retain custody of the monies for some time so that the socio-economic purpose of the law could be achieved.

(3.) It will be appropriate to first deal with the statutory provisions of the new Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and examine whether the language employed by the Parliament, in any way, restricts the power of the Tribunal in controlling and regulating the user of the compensation.