CWP No. 13789 of 2010 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB & HARYANA, CHANDIGARH CWP No. 13789 of 2010 Date of decision: September 5,2011 Oriental Insurance Company Limited ....... Petitioner Versus Smt. Sangeeta and others ........Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN Present:- Mr. Veena Ashwani Talwar, Advocate for the petitioner. Mr. R. S. Mamli, Advocate for respondent Nos. 1 to 4 and 7. Mr. Ravinder Jain, Advocate for respondent No.5 and 6. **** 1. Whether reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment ? 2. To be referred to the reporters or not? 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the digest? K. Kannan, J (oral). 1. The writ petition is filed by the Insurance Company stating that assessment of compensation at `42,78,760/- is highly exaggerated. The petitioner had not the benefit of defence under Section 170 to join issues on the question of compensation. Hence the Company files a writ petition. What the law prohibits and makes unavailable certain contentions to be raised by means of appeal under Section 173 of the Motor Vehicles Act cannot be circumvented through a device of writ petition. Writ petition itself is not maintainable and deserves a dismissal as such. 2. If the contention were to be that it is an CWP No. 13789 of 2010 2 unconscionable award that does not take into account the parameters which were required to be gone into, it could offer scope for appraisal. The attack on the award is that the award does not make a deduction of income tax payable and adopts however, the formula given in Sarla Verma Vs. Delhi Road Transport Corporation reported in (2009) 6 SC 121 by taking the salary earned at the time of his death and also provides for 50% increase as going towards promotional prospects and higher emoluments over a period of time. The deceased was a Corporal in Indian Air Force drawing a salary of 18615/-. He had died when he was 32 years old, leaving behind four dependants and consequently the Tribunal had deducted 1/4th towards his personal expenses. The method of assessing compensation by projecting what he could have earned as an average salary for the rest of his life is after all an approximation but it cannot be attempted with any arithmetic precision. It could have been possible that the assessment had been varied by one or two lacs either way of the amount determined but that cannot mean that the award becomes illegal. Learned counsel's argument that the amount assessed if deposited would yield a return of nearly about `35,000/- which is much more than what he was earning per month is again no argument worthy of acceptance, since even `32,000/- for a Corporal in the Air Force is far less than what the scales would fetch in the present times. 3. I find no scope for interference and the writ petition is dismissed. (K. KANNAN) JUDGE September 5 , 2011 archana