Civil Writ Petition No. 1565 of 2011 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No. 1565 of 2011 Date of decision: 16.05.2011 Smt. Shakuntla ...Petitioner Versus State of Haryana and others ...Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RANJIT SINGH Present: Mr. Anil Ghanghas, Advocate for the petitioner. Ms. Shurti Jain, AAG, Haryana for the State. RANJIT SINGH J. It is rather sad to notice that to get benefit under such laudable scheme introduced by the Government of Haryana a person has to approach the court of law. A scheme by the name of Rajiv Gandhi Parivar Bima Yojna to cover the citizen between the age of 18 to 60 years with the insurance cover of ` 1 lakh in case of any accidental deaths is introduced by the State. To implement the scheme, the Government entered into Memorandum of Understanding with Reliance General Insurance Company Ltd. for one year w.e.f. 28.03.2008. The Government has paid a premium of ` 17.85 crores. It is noticed that the Insurance Company generally dither in making the payment to discharge the liability in such cases. The Government except for forwarding the case to Insurance Company is generally seen expressing its helplessness to take any appropriate measures to ensure that the payments are released to Civil Writ Petition No. 1565 of 2011 2 the affected families. What good will such scheme serve if the government cannot ensure payment to the affected needy public. Such families first suffer the shock of losing a member of family and then are left to enter into litigation for getting their dues. In fairness it is the responsibility of the Government to ensure release of payments. This is a not very satisfactory state of affairs and something will have to be done by the Government in this regard. This is not one of the odd cases where this situation is so noticed. In fact, this Court had to intervene in large number of cases earlier. Even directions to release the payment with interest besides burdening the insurance company with costs has not made the things to change. Something more may have to be done. The facts in this case are that the son of the petitioner died in road accident on 09.07.2008. The petitioner applied for payment of the amount under the scheme. After scrutiny, the case was sent to respondent No. 2 for the purpose of making payment on 13.08.2008. Thereafter, started the process of endless visits by the petitioner to the office of respondents No. 2 and 4 without any effect on the company. Having waited for over two years, the petitioner served a legal notice on 03.08.2010. Still nothing moved the respondent-State or the Insurance Company. Certainly something more can be expected from the Government. It cannot simply wash its hands off after forwarding the case to insurance company. The petitioner has, therefore, approached this Court with the present writ petition. Though the reply has not filed on behalf of the State yet the State counsel points out that the claim of the petitioner after Civil Writ Petition No. 1565 of 2011 3 scrutiny was forwarded to the respondent/Insurance Company but it has miserably failed to discharge the liability without any justification. No one has put in appearance on behalf of Insurance Company. The defence, if any, therefore is struck off. The consequence is that the averment made in the writ petition are taken to be true for the purpose of this order. In this case, the Insurance company has not chosen to put in appearance. This situation cannot be allowed to drift like this. The direction would have to be issued for the State to take appropriate action against the Insurance Company in case it fails to comply with the requirement within a time bound period. The State after framing the policy cannot leave its citizens to the whims and fancies of the private insurance company. Directions, therefore, are issued to Commissioner and Secretary, Government of Haryana Department of Social Justice and Empowerment to look into this aspect and to ensure that insurance company is asked to give an undertaking to discharge the liability in time bound manner once the claim is passed and forwarded to the Company. There has to be some effective mechanism put in place by the State, which can avoid this avoidable litigation reaching the courts. The State may consider appointing a Nodal Officer to liaison with the company to ensure release of the payment by noticing such cases after these are forwarded to the present Insurance Company. The office of Advocate General, Haryana would ensure that some mechanism as suggested or any other appropriate one is put in place so as to ensure payment of such claims instead of leaving such persons at the mercy of the present insurance company. The outcome of the Civil Writ Petition No. 1565 of 2011 4 same may be intimated to the Court by moving appropriate application. The writ petition is allowed. The respondent/Insurance Company is directed to release the amount within a period of two weeks from today. The petitioner is held entitled to costs of this writ petition, which is assessed as ` 20,000/-. The petitioner shall also be entitled to interest at the rate of 9% per annum from the insurance company from the date the claim was due to the date of payment. May 16, 2011 (RANJIT SINGH ) rts JUDGE