New Delhi: A woman who lost her husband in a road accident when they were travelling to Jammu and Kashmir has been awarded nearly Rs. 64 lakh as compensation by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT).
Presiding officer Arvind Kumar of MACT, Karkardooma, held that the woman was liable to get compensation of Rs. 63.70 lakh with interest at the rate of nine percent.
Vandana Sharma, a resident of east Delhi’s Krishna Nagar, had approached the tribunal claiming compensation of over Rs.3.50 crore for the death of her husband, Anupam Sharma, 48, who was Assistant General Manager with Maruti Suzuki India on a monthly salary of over Rs.2 lakh.
The woman said that on Dec 25, 2010, she along with her husband and two sons went to Vaishno Devi and while returning to Delhi, their car met with an accident with a bus at Udhampur.
She said that her husband was driving the Maruti Suzuki car when a speeding bus from the opposite direction hit the vehicle. She said that the bus was driven rashly and negligently.
While her husband died on the spot, the woman and her two sons were injured.
She had claimed the compensation from the National Insurance Company, the bus owner and the driver.
The insurance company and the bus driver denied her allegations, saying that it was her husband who was driving the car on the wrong side of the road.
The presiding officer countered the allegation, confirming that the bus was being driven at high speed and the car was being driven at normal speed.
However, it was also held that the car was being driven slightly on the right side of the middle verge.
“If the bus was on normal speed, the bus driver could have stopped it in time or could have avoided the accident by taking his vehicle aside.
“However, the negligence on the part of the deceased is also apparent from the fact that he was not driving on left side of the road but in the middle of the road with some part of the vehicle on the right side of the central verge,” the order said.
It added: “In hilly areas the drivers have to be extra careful while driving but facts on the record show that neither the deceased nor the driver of the bus has taken due care and caution while driving their vehicles. Both the drivers involved in accident were negligent.”
The presiding officer ordered that Sharma’s husband was 60 percent responsible for the accident and the bus driver was 40 percent responsible.
The tribunal had initially awarded over Rs. 1.52 crore compensation to the woman but holding that since the negligence of her husband was 60 percent the cause of the accident, it reduced the award to Rs.63.70 lakh.
It asked the bus driver to pay Rs.18.34 lakh and the bus owner and the insurance company to pay Rs.21.40 lakh each to the woman.