Should government compensate accident victims if rogue vehicle uninsured? SC to decide case

NEW DELHI: An accident victim’s wife raised an important question before the Supreme Court on Wednesday — should state governments not be liable to pay compensation to the family of those who die or get injured in accidents involving an uninsured vehicle?

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud was initially resistant to the idea of state compensating accident victims’ kin but advocate Radhika Gautam argued that when uninsured vehicles were involved in accidents resulting in fatalities or injuries, the object behind the Motor Vehicles Act to expeditiously compensate them got frustrated.

She said the MV Act made third party insurance mandatory for vehicles and it was an offence to drive an uninsured vehicle. The mandate behind the law was that the family of those killed or injured in accidents should not be made to litigate for years to get compensation from the owner or driver of the vehicle.


Gautam said the Act intended that the kin of those killed or injured could approach Motor Accident Claims Tribunals (MACT) for speedy adjudication of claims and direction to insurance companies to pay up. The insurer could then litigate to recover the compensation amount from the vehicle owner or driver, she added.

Finding attorney general K K Venugopal present in court, the bench sought his assistance in adjudicating the question of law and asked Gautam to give him a copy of the petition.

Petitioner Usha Devi’s husband was killed in a road accident in January 2015 and her son was injured. She moved the MACT seeking compensation, but the tribunal found that the rogue vehicle was uninsured. Devi moved the Punjab and Haryana high court and sought to make the state a party to claims proceedings. However, the HC rejected her plea.