Supreme Court: Taking note of an important legal question raised by the High Court of Kerala while hearing a Motor Vehicle Accident claim case, the 3-judge bench of NV Ramana, Surya Kant and Aniruddha Bose, JJ has agreed to decide the following question:
“Whether in the matter of awarding costs, the procedure and rules framed under the Constitution, CPC and the Rules made thereunder, for `Courts’, could be resorted to by the Claims Tribunal which is apparently, not a `Court.”
The petitioner in the Special Leave petition, challenged the Kerala High Court’s judgment whereby the High Court upheld the compensation granted by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Kottayam in favour of the injured respondent. It was argued that
“the Tribunal does not possess any authority to award any costs as incidental to its power over the parties or the subject matter of the litigation, and the Tribunal being constituted under a special enactment is to be governed solely by the provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.”
The Court, hence, allowed the special leave petition to the limited extent of examining the legal issue raised by the petitioner.
Advocate N.Vijayaraghavan will be assisting the Court as amicus curiae.
[ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company v. MD Davasia, 2021 SCC OnLine SC 79, order dated 11.02.2021]
Appearance before the Court by
For Petitioner: Rana Mukherjee, Sr.Adv., Nagesh, Adv., Daisy Hannah, Adv. and Shekhar Kumar, AOR.