Case: State Of Haryana Vs. Darshana Devi &amp; Ors

4. Here is a case of a widow and daughter claiming compensation for the killing of the sole bread-winner by a State Transport bus; and the Haryana Government, instead of acting on social justice and generously settling the claim, fights like a cantankerous litigant even by avoiding adjudication through the device of asking for court-fee from the pathetic plaintiffs.

Reasoning: 5. Two principles are involved. Access to court is an aspect of social justice and the State has no rational litigation policy if it forgets this fundamental.The second principle the State of Haryana has unhappily failed to remember is its duty under Article 41 of the Constitution to render public assistance, without litigation, in cases of disablement and undeserved want. It is a notorious fact that our highways are graveyards on a tragic sale, what with narrow, neglected roads, reckless, unchecked drivers, heavy vehicular traffic and State Transport buses often inflicting the maximum casualties. Now that insurance against third party risk is compulsory and motor insurance is nationalised and transport itself is largely by State Undertakings, the principle of no-fault liability and on-the-spot settlement of claims should become national policy. The victims, as here, are mostly below the poverty line and litigation is compounded misery. Hit-and-run cases are common and the time is ripe for the Court to examine whetherliability is not implicit in the Motor Vehicles Act itself and for Parliament to make law in this behalf to remove all doubts.A long-ago Report of the Central Law Commission confined to hit-and-run cases of auto-accidents is gathering dust. The horrendous increase of highway casualties and the chronic neglect of rules of road-safety constrains us to recommend to the Central Law Commission and to Parliament to sensitize this tragic area of tort law and overhaul it humanistically.7. Another aspect must be noticed before we part with this petition. In many States, for want of judicial manpower or other pathological causes, the accident claims pend before tribunals in heartless slowness. Courts must give this bleeding class of cases high priority, adopt simplified procedures without breach of national justice, try out pre-trial settlements and narrow down the controversy and remember, that wiping every tear from every eye has judicial relevance. For law must keep its promise to justice.