F.A.O.NO. 3152 OF 1996 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH F.A.O.NO. 3152 OF 1996 Date of decision:1st September, 2010 United India Insurance Company Limited through its Manager at Chandigarh. .......Appellant Versus Lila Wati and others ........Respondents BEFORE: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K.KANNAN Present: Mr. V.Chaudhary, Advocate, for the appellant. None for the respondents. 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? Yes 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not?Yes 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? Yes K.Kannan, J.(Oral) 1. The appeal is filed by the Insurance Company on a point that the accident had taken place on 2.01.1993 and as per the scale of compensation at that time the amount payable on 'no fault' basis under Section 140 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (hereinafter referred to as the 'Act') was Rs. 25,000/- but the Tribunal while deciding the case in the year 1996 awarded compensation of Rs. 50,000/- on the basis of an amendment that had been brought by Act 54 of 1994, increasing the amount of compensation from Rs. 25,000/- to Rs. 50,000/-. Learned counsel appearing for the insurer would contend that the increase in compensation of Rs. 50,000/- will avail only for F.A.O.NO. 3152 OF 1996 2 accident that took place subsequent to 14.11.1994 and will not apply to pending cases of accidents that had taken place prior to 19.11.1994. The contention in essence is that the award could have been only for Rs. 25,000/- and not for Rs. 50,000/-. 2. In my view, the submission is not correct and cannot be accepted. The original amount in Section 92(A) of the Act provided was Rs. 15,000/- It came to be increased to Rs. 25,000/- subsequently when the new Act of 1988 came into force. This amount was again enhanced on exhortation by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the decision of Parmanand Katara versus Union of India and another (1990) ACJ 1021 which commended that the amount should be enhanced. While awarding the compensation the Hon'ble Supreme Court therefore, allowed for the enhanced compensation for what should be taken as the compensation payable on that date, without reference to the date of accident. This principle was followed by this Court in Mosi and another versus Ram Kumar (1992) ACJ 192. That was a case where the Division Bench was ordering for an enhanced compensation of Rs. 25,000/- when at the date of accident the compensation on 'no fault' basis could have been only Rs. 15,000/-. In other words, the Division Bench applied the scale of compensation at the particular time when the award was passed. Madhya Pardesh High Court also applied the same logic and provided for compensation of Rs. 50,000/- for an accident that had taken place prior to amendment brought under Section 92(A) of the old Act, by taking into account the date of award as F.A.O.NO. 3152 OF 1996 3 relevant. The said judgment has been reported in Bhilya by legal representatives Ram Singh versus Nand Kishore 1999 ACJ 1009. The same view was also expressed by this Court in Jagdish Kaur versus Raghubir Singh (2004) 3 ACJ 1275. All these decisions show the way that the award of compensation shall be the scale as provided by the amended provisions at the time when the award is passed. The contention of the learned counsel for the Insurance Company is rejected, the award of the Tribunal is sustained and the appeal is dismissed. [K.KANNAN] JUDGE 1st September, 2010 Shivani Kaushik