Award of cash to claimants in accident: Union of India, state

The Madras High Court today impleaded the Union of India and the state transport department as respondents on an appeal by the latter against award of various amounts of cash to claimants injured in an accident involving two buses.
Justice N Kirubakaran, before whom the appeal by the transport department came up, raised several questions, including on fixation of speed governors in transport vehicles and directed the respondents to file replies by July 15.
The department had appealed against award of various amounts in favour of claimants who got injured due to the collision of two buses which were allegedly driven rashly and negligently at speed.

The Judge, after referring to Rule 118 of Central Motor Vehicles Rules,1989, which mandates fitting of speed governors to transport vehicles, directed the Union and the state government to answer queries, one among which was if anything had been issued by the state government in the official gazette on such vehicles which are required to be fitted with speed governors.
The court wanted to know if all transport vehicles run in India, including in Tamil Nadu, are fitted with speed governors as per Rule 118, if there was any mechanism to verify whether these have been fixed in vehicles, whether transport authorities insist on them being mandatorily fitted at the time of registration.

Other questions posed were whether any action had been taken by authorities to seize those vehicles run without speed governors, how many cases were registered in this regard so far for the past ten years, how many accidents had occurred in India and Tamil Nadu over this period due to speedy driving, the number of those killed and injured in mishaps and value of loss of properties in those accidents
The judge then directed the state and central government Transport Departments to reply to these queries by July 15.