JANKI DEVI Vs. LIC OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This judgment of ours shall dispose of above mentioned four appeals as they have arisen out of the common order dated 19.1.2000 passed by District Forum, Ambala, whereby all the four complaints have been dismissed.

(2.) GOBIND Ram Chawla had taken six life insurance policies on 10.8.1993. He died on 6.9.1994. The complainants, who are widow and sons of the deceased, put claim before the opposite party but their claim was repudiated on the ground that the insured had suppressed the material information regarding his state of health and ailment at the time he took the insurance policies. It is thereafter the complainants invoked the jurisdiction of the District Forum by filing four complaints and the same were dismissed vide its first order dated 5.11.1998. The complainants preferred appeals against the said order before the State Commission and the Commission vide its order dated 25.5.1999 quashed the order under appeals and the appeals were remanded to the District Forum for a fresh decision on merits in accordance with law after affording two opportunities each of the parties to substantiate their case. In compliance thereof, necessary opportunities were given to the parties but they did not adduce any fresh evidence as is recorded in the impugned order. After hearing the learned Counsel for the parties, the District Forum dismissed all the four complaints vide order dated 19.1.2000. Aggrieved by the said orders, the present appeals have been filed.

(3.) AT the outset, notice has to be taken to the submissions made by the Counsel representing the parties with regard to the procedure adopted by the District Forum in deciding the complaints. In support of the stand taken before us, our attention was drawn to one of the submissions made before the District Forum by the complainants was that even after the opposite party got medically examined the insured from two doctors prior to the issuance of the insurance policies, still no major ailment of the insured was detected by them and for that reason there was no justification for repudiation of the claim. In answer to the contention made, it was urged from the side of the respondent that those two doctors could not know about the illness of the insured. During the medical check up of the insured, they had given their opinion on the basis of reply furnished by the insured in the form filled and signed by him to the various questions with regard to his previous state of health and illness. It is clear from the impugned order that the above issues raised before the District Forum, have not been independently dealt with on the basis of evidence adduced on record as is borne out from the following observations recorded in the order :