Madhya Pradesh High Court: Vivek Agarwal, J. while hearing two miscellaneous appeals analogously, refused to exonerate the Insurance Company and modified the impugned award of the claimant by an enhancement of Rs 70,378/-.
A miscellaneous appeal was filed by New India Insurance Company Limited challenging the award dated 04-02-2015 on two grounds, namely that the driver of the offending vehicle was not having licence to drive a commercial vehicle, namely ‘Vikram’ bearing No. MP-07-R-1602 and therefore, Insurance Company should have been exonerated of its liability and secondly, the accident took place when the claimant Faiziya Khan was crossing the road and therefore, aspect of contributory negligence should have been taken into consideration. While, the appellant-Faiziya Khan, had filed an appeal to enhance the award passed in order to compensate her for her injuries.
The learned counsel for the insurance company, Mr Shrinivas Gajendragadkar, put forth a two-fold argument that firstly, the driver of the offending vehicle did not have a license to drive a commercial vehicle; and secondly, that the claimant was negligent in crossing the road. The counsel further relied upon Halki Bai v. Managing Director, Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation, 2004(3) T.A.C. 821(M.P.), to support his contention that since claimant was crossing the road negligently, therefore, it will be a case of contributory negligence. The claimant, Faiziya Khan, on the other hand, maintained that the award passed in her favor was inadequate as compared to her injuries and pains and needed to be enhanced.
The Court dismissed the appeal by the insurance company observing that the Halki Bai v. Managing Director, Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation, 2004 (3) T.A.C. 821(M.P.), was not applicable here as in the present case it has been mentioned in a report that the accident took place due to fault in the steering of auto. In view thereof, it was held that there was no contributory negligence on the part of the claimant.
The Court also cited Mukund Dewangan v. Oriental Insurance Company Ltd., (2017) 14 SCC 663 in which the Court had held that if a driver is holding the license to drive a light motor vehicle, he can drive a transport vehicle of such class without any endorsement. By relying on the aforementioned judgment, the Court refused to exonerate the Insurance Company on the lack of endorsement of the driver.
Ruling on the claimant’s appeal, the Court modified the impugned award by enhancement of Rs 70,378 in favor of the claimant by increasing the compensation for livelihood, transport and future treatment.[New India Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Mohd. Ajiz, 2019 SCC OnLine MP 818, decided on 08-05-2019]
