Oriental Insurance Company Ltd v. Tripta & Ors.

The Hon(cid:146)ble Mr.Justice Deepak Gupta, J. Whether approved for reporting?1 No. For the petitioner: Mr. Ashwani K.Sharma, Advocate. For respondent No.1 & 2. Mr. Vivek Singh, Advocate. Deepak Gupta, J. (oral) This petition is directed against the order dated 15.11.2007 whereby the right to file reply by the petitioner-Insurance Company has been struck off. Briefly stated, the facts of the case are that the respondents 1 and 2 filed an application under Section 163-A of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 for grant of compensation. In this application, the respondents were served on 30th August, 2007. Time was sought for filing the reply. Order of the Officer of the Court is that power of attorney and reply by respondent No.1 be filed on

25.9.2007. On the next date, the learned Presiding Officer was on leave and the matter was listed for 1 Whether the reporters of the local papers may be allowed to see the Judgment? yes. appropriate order on 6.10.2007. On 6.10.2007 respondent No.3 filed an application for production of certain documents by the owner. The case was then listed for reply to this application on 5.11.2007. It was specifically ordered that reply to the petition and power of attorney on behalf of respondent No.1 shall also be filed on the said date. It would be pertinent to mention that no order passed till this date directing the respondent No.3 i.e. the Insurance Company to file a reply. It appears that no direction was given to respondent No.3 because respondent No.3 must have prayed in its application that till the documents are supplied by respondent No.1 it would not be in a position to file reply. On 5.11.2007 the documents as required by respondent No.3 were filed and the matter was then listed for 15.11.2007 and this was ordered to be the last opportunity for filing the reply.

In my view, the learned Motor Accident Claims Tribunal was not justified in passing such an order. The documents were made available only on 5.11.2007. The leanred Motor Accident Claims Tribunal should have given reasonable time to the Insurance Company to file his reply. Only 10 days time can not be considered reasonable. On 15.11.2007 when reply was not filed, the impugned order was passed and the right to file the reply was struck off. Effectively the Insurance Company was only given 10 days time to file the reply. This is not at all the mandate of law. Every party, whether it be the claimant or the Insurance Company or the owner or the driver should be treated equally and should get reasonable time to file reply. Closing the right of the Insurance Company to file reply within 10 days was legally not permissible. In view of the above discussion, I have no hesitation in holding that the order passed by the learned Motor Accident Claim Tribunal is unduly harsh and deserves to be set-aside.

The same is accordingly set- aside. The Insurance Company is directed to file its reply before the learned Tribunal on or before the next date i.e. 4th August, 2008. Parties through their counsel are directed to appear before the learned Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Chamba, on 4th August, 2008. 30th June, 2008 (cid:153) (Deepak Gupta), J.