600 new courts for accident cases……Subhendu Ray
Lakhs of families of accident victims in India will heave a sigh of relief. There will be let up in their woes, as India will soon have special district level empowered courts to hear and clear the cases of accident victims without delay.
After recently receiving communication from Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Kamal Nath, ministry of law and justice has agreed to set up over 600 special district level empowered courts to award road accident insurance claims within 30 to 45 days and thus bring considerable relief to the affected families.
Veerappa Moily, Minister of Law and Justice told HT: “We are trying to set up 600 empowered courts across the country at the earliest. These fast track courts will help reduce problems for accident victims.
According to Nath: “There is a huge backlog of such insurance claims of accident victims… These are vitiated by many factors including shortage of judges, court time etc. There are large number of retired judges located all over the country and we can mobilise their services for resolving this problem.”
“A judicial impact study has been conducted on this proposal. Once the special courts are set up, the victims will get money very fast and there will be no need to make rounds of insurance company offices and courts,” said a senior officer in ministry of law and justice.
“According to a presentation made by an Insurance Company in the last International Road Federation (IRF) Regional Conference in October 2009, there were 9,41,892 cases pending as on 31 March 2009. It might have grown to some 10 lakhs by now. It was recommended in IRF Conference that the retired judges may be used to organise special fast track courts for accident claims and these may be processed and settled within shortest possible time,” said K.K. Kapila, chairman, IRF.