MAHILA RAMDEI Vs. NAND KUMAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Respondents have been duly served. Except respondent No. 1 the other two have not appeared as yet, though this appeal was admitted on 20-1-1987. This is a matter in which the constitutional compulsion is so heavy and pressing as to call for instant disposal that hearing cannot be deferred any further on any ground whatsoever. Accordingly, I propose not to consider or make any order on I. A. No. III filed in this matter. That application, made in this Court on 9-7-1987, shall be disposed of by the Tribunal when the matter goes back and steps are taken thereat to implead legal representatives of deceased Respondent No. 2, Shivnarayan. At this stage it will suffice to say that his death took place on 28-6-1987, during pendency of this appeal and indeed after he was duly served.

(2.) I see no reason to take today a different view in this matter and indeed it is necessary only to reiterate the view taken by me on 20-1-1987 in admitting the appeal, which has to be merely buttressed appropriately. By the impugned order the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal has dismissed the claim-petition preferred by the instant petitioner refusing the prayer for an adjournment made on that date on the ground of claimant's own illness. The Tribunal took the view that in the proceedings, since 8-10-1985 several dates having beep fixed for claimants evidence, the claimant should not be given more opportunity or further latitude in the matter of adducing her own evidence or evidence of any other witnesses that she could examine in support of her case. On 20-1-1987 I had noted that the Tribunal had not passed any order in the pending matter giving relief to the applicant under S.92-A of the Motor Vehicles Act, for short 'the Act'. Today that position is not disputed and what is also indisputable is that claim for compensation was made for the fracture of her leg in the accident which the claimant met on 6-6-1984.

(3.) I have consistently taken the view that a statutory duty is cast on the Tribunal to act suo motu under S.92-A and if that view is correct and not to be departed from, it is difficult not to hold the impugned (order) to be illegal, unconstitutional and void. Indeed how can the claim petition itself be dismissed without the Tribunal acting under S.92-A. Because, the final award on the application preferred under S.110-A can be made under S.110-B of the Act on proof of tortious liability while S.92-A contemplates explicitly "no fault" liability. Claimants right to have an award under S.92-A cannot, therefore, be killed by the Tribunal adopting to leap-frog procedure to dismiss the claim-petition made under S.110-A and denying itself the jurisdiction to act under S.92-A. It may be that no prayer had been made in the instant case for grant of relief under S.92-A but till such time as the lis was pending there was a jurisdiction vested in the Tribunal and a duty cast on it first to act under S.92-A before proceeding to dispose of in any manner the claim-petition. Indeed, the application made under S.110-A could not have been dismissed on any ground whatsoever till the Tribunal had exercised its jurisdiction one way or the other under S.92-A. Sub-Sec. (2) of S.92-B itself explicitly contemplates this position by requiring that the claim "under S.92-A shall be disposed of as aforesaid in the first place" and also, "as expeditiously as possible".