Set Up A Mechanism To Pay No-Fault Liability Immediately To Legal Heirs Of The Motor Accident Victims: SC [Read Judgment]

The Supreme Court has sought assistance from the Central and state governments to set up a mechanism whereby no-fault liability is to be paid immediately to the legal heirs of the deceased victims of road accidents and the source from which the payment is to be made and how it is to be collected.

A Bench comprising Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel opined thus while hearing a writ petition preferred by S Rajasekaran.

The court, emphasising that this was not an adversarial litigation, said: “It has been brought to our notice that there is one person dying in every three minutes as a result of road accident.  We have also been informed that in almost half of these deaths, which are in the region of 1, 47,000, the legal heirs of the victims are not compensated.  This is an extremely unfortunate situation.”

During the last hearing, the bench had asked the Union of India to explain the steps it had taken in this regard to bring about awareness amongst victims/families of road accident victims.

The bench had also noted that has noted that the number of insurance claims made on account of death is roughly half of the number of deaths.

Read the Judgment here.

This article has been made possible because of financial support from Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation.