New Delhi: In an important judgment aimed at ensuring road safety, the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) to evolve a pilot project under which uninsured vehicles could be denied fuel at petrol pumps.
A bench of Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra issued a slew of directions, including integration of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras with insurance databases to generate automatic e-challans for uninsured vehicles, provision of handheld devices to traffic police for real-time verification of insurance status, enhancement of mandatory third-party insurance tenure for new vehicles, and expeditious disposal of old motor accident compensation cases.
The bench observed nearly 56% of vehicles plying on Indian roads are uninsured, and that the statutory safeguard of compensating road accident victims was often “delayed, if not defeated”, forcing victims and their families into prolonged litigation.
“The object behind mandatory insurance under Section 146 of the Motor Vehicles Act is not just that victims of road accidents are compensated, it is also that they are not drawn into prolonged litigation,” it noted.
ANPR cameras already deployed on highways and city roads for detecting traffic violations should be integrated with the Insurance Information Bureau database and VAHAN portal to enable automatic issuance of e-challans to uninsured vehicles, the top court directed.
States were directed to equip traffic police with handheld devices or mobile applications linked to these databases to verify insurance status on the spot and issue challans.
The court further said there must be strict implementation of proposed amendment to Section 196 of the Motor Vehicles Act, which prescribes steeper penalties for driving uninsured vehicles once notified by the Centre.
For new vehicle buyers, the mandatory third-party insurance cover was ordered to be enhanced from three years to four years for private cars and from five years to six years for two-wheelers.
The bench explained it was extending the period by one year despite IRDAI and General Insurance Council recommending against such a move because such a measure was necessary in the interest of road safety.
The structure of motor insurance policies is also set to be overhauled.
The top court directed implementation of a uniform four-layer framework comprising a mandatory third-party policy, an optional legal liability cover for occupants and pillion riders, an optional personal accident cover for the owner, driver and occupants, and an optional own-damage cover.
The judgment came as the bench disposed of an appeal filed by National Insurance Company Ltd against a Telangana High Court order awarding compensation to the family of a man who died in a 1996 road accident while travelling in his own Maruti 800 car.
