F.A.O.NO. 2100 OF 2010(O&M) 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH F.A.O.NO. 2100 OF 2010(O&M) Date of decision:27th October, 2010 Hanifa and others .......Appellants Versus Smt. Roshan Jha and others ........Respondents BEFORE: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K.KANNAN Present: Mr. Ashit Malik, Advocate, for the appellants. None for the respondents. 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? Yes/No 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not?Yes/No 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? Yes/No K.Kannan, J.(Oral) 1. The appeal is by the owner of the vehicle on whom the liability was fastened, with the insurance company having been granted a right of recovery after satisfying the claim of the claimants. The right was recognised to exist in favour of the insurer on the ground that the deceased was seen as a passenger in a goods carriage. 2. Learned counsel appearing for the appellant would contend that it was the admitted case of even the insurer that the person who was travelling in the goods carriage was proceeding to F.A.O.NO. 2100 OF 2010(O&M) 2 load cattle which fell within the definition of 'goods' under the Motor Vehicles Act. He was not merely a gratuitous passenger. The Tribunal had rejected this contention by a reasoning that if the accident had taken place on the return when the goods had been loaded on the vehicle, the liability of the insurer could be clearly fastened but not in a case where the goods had not been loaded. 3. I cannot find fault with the reasoning of the Tribunal. The requirement of compulsory insurance as contemplated under Section 147 of the Motor Vehicles Act through an amendment made by Act 54 of 1994, is for an insurance cover for death or bodily injuries to any person, including the owner of the goods or his authorised representative carried in that vehicle. The expression must be understood only as a person who comes by bodily injury or death, if he is accompanying his goods. A contemplated future use that the goods were intended to be loaded and therefore, he was travelling in the vehicle, cannot in my view, provide justification. A person, in order to be a passenger in a goods carriage, can not become one till he gets the goods loaded in the vehicle. He obtains no right to treat himself as a person who is entitled to travel as a passenger. Indeed this line of logic would virtually create a new class of contemplated passengers or owners of goods travelling in goods carriage, for a possible future use for transporting goods and travelling with the same, will give a new scope for a justification for putting every goods carriage to be used as a passenger vehicle. To me it makes no difference that there is an F.A.O.NO. 2100 OF 2010(O&M) 3 admission by the insurer that the persons who were travelling in the goods carriage had contemplated to bring the goods and so long as goods were not there in the goods carriage being transported at that relevant time, they existed no right to be there in the vehicle travelling as passengers. The award of the Tribunal is confirmed and the appeal is dismissed. [K.KANNAN] JUDGE 27th October, 2010 Shivani Kaushik