FAO No.120 of 2003 -1- IN THE HIGH COURT FOR THE STATES OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH FAO No.120 of 2003 Date of Decision.12.07.2010 New India Assurance Co. Ltd., having its Regional Office at SCO No.36-37, Sector 17-A, Chandigarh through Shri Anil Chawla, Legal Officer, duly constituted attorney .........Appellant Versus Janak Singh aged 31 years son of Rattan Singh son of Chanan Singh and others .......Respondents Present: Mr. P.S. Saini, Advocate for the appellant. None for the respondents. CORAM:HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN 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 insurance company is in appeal challenging the validity of the order on the ground that the claimant was a brother of the deceased and he could not be treated as a legal representative. It was his further contention that there are two other brothers and they had not been impleaded. The contention is that if all brothers are legal representatives, all of them must have been made as parties. 2. Both the contentions are untenable in law. Section 166 of the Motor Vehicles Act, which enables compensation to be claimed for death of a person, does not anywhere use the expression legal FAO No.120 of 2003 -2- heir to be a claimant. Section 167 of the Motor Vehicles Act, which details the categories of persons, who could make the claim states in Clause (c) as follows:- “Where death has resulted from accident, by all or any of the legal representatives of the deceased.” Though the definition of legal representative has not been defined anywhere under the act, it should be understood only as an expression i.e. larger than legal heirs. All the Courts in India have been unanimous in approach to understand the legal representative as a person, who will suffer a deprivation by the death of the person and who would have had a stake in the estate by the normal rule of succession or who would have had a right to obtain maintenance if he had been alive. Brothers and sisters have always been treated as persons who could file applications as legal representatives. The Hon'ble Supreme Court in Gurjarat State Road Transport Corporation Vs. Raman Bhai Prabhat Bhai AIR 1979 SC 1690 has allowed for a claim to be prosecuted at the instance of brothers and sisters. This Court has considered the same issue in several cases and particular references could also be made to Prasanni Devi Vs. State of Haryana 1973 (75) PLR 811; Subhash Chandra VS. State of Haryana AIR 74 (P&H) 54; Dharampal Chandra Vs. Ram Singh (1985) 2 SCC 366; Singara Singh VS. Ajit Singh (1993) 1 SCC 490 and Raghbir Singh Vs. Tilak Singh (1991) 1 ACC 27. 3. Even the issue of whether a non-impleadment of all legal representatives would be material, has been considered literally by all High Courts including this Court where the consistent line of FAO No.120 of 2003 -3- authority is that such a defect will not have a bearing to the maintainability of the petition. The law does not require that all the legal representatives of a deceased should be impleaded in a claim petition. In a given situation, where all the representatives are not impleaded, an opportunity shall be given to the claimants to implead the legal representatives not so impleaded. If on the other hand, the proceedings has gone without impleadment of them, it should be seen whether the persons who have not been impleaded were required to be impleaded and whether the claimant could be treated as trustee for all others as well. One method of ensuring that all the legal representatives take the benefit of the award would be to array the legal representatives, who are not impleaded as respondents. Another situation could be when the claimant amongst several persons is the only person, who is deprived of his dependence by the death and other siblings are not in any way affected since they had their own means of support. In a typical Indian social setting, it could be that the younger brother would be dependent on particular brother while there could be other major brothers, who had independent sources of income by their own earning and they did not depend on the brother who died. All this is only to state that there could be several instances where to show that the mere absence of all the legal representatives on the one side figuring as petitioners or respondents is not a sine qua non for considering the maintainability of the petition. 4. Even this discussion may appear purely academic if we examine that the insurance company is in appeal challenging the FAO No.120 of 2003 -4- quantum. The insurance company has no locus standi to challenge the quantum without a permission taken under Section 170. The prosecution of the case by one legal representative is not illegal and the Tribunal was not without jurisdiction at all for appraisal of the claim at the instance of one among other legal representatives. 5. The appeal is consequently dismissed as devoid of merit. (K. KANNAN) JUDGE July 12, 2010 Pankaj*