SC asks Centre to link fuel sale with valid insurance, start pilot in Delhi

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to implement its direction for a pilot project by which fuel for vehicles would be refused at petrol pumps unless they have valid insurance.

In a significant verdict delivered on August 4, the apex court had taken serious note of a large number of vehicles plying without third-party insurance cover and directed the Centre to evolve a pilot project under which fuel for vehicles would be linked with valid insurance status.

The matter came up for hearing on Wednesday before a bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Prashant Kumar Mishra.

The counsel appearing for the Centre referred to the direction given by the top court for evolving a pilot project and said the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has some concerns about it.

 

"You have to implement it," the bench said, adding that the pilot project may be started from Delhi.

The counsel told the bench that oil marketing companies will have to sit with the dealers for this.

"You start the pilot project," the bench observed.

It also asked the Centre's counsel to come out with a concrete proposal with timelines to comply with the directions issued by the top court in its August 4 verdict.

The bench posted the matter for hearing on August 21.

In its judgement, the apex court had taken note of the number of road accidents on national highways and also the effect of long queues at toll plazas, and directed the Centre to implement pilot projects on certain corridors, substituting the process of stopping at toll plazas with automatic detection of vehicles passing through toll points.

It flagged the lack of compliance of provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act requiring all vehicles to have a valid insurance policy covering third parties.

"As deliberated upon in court, the IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority) in consultation with the MoRTH (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways) to deliberate and evolve a pilot project whereby fuel for vehicles to be linked with valid insurance status," it said.

"In the absence thereof, the vehicle concerned would be refused fuel at petrol pumps, until such time that valid insurance is obtained," the bench said.

It said that the move of denial of fuel will have a two-fold benefit and will assist in identification of uninsured or unregistered vehicles and secondly, it will prompt the owners of these vehicles to ensure that they have valid insurance status.

"Such projects would ensure ground-level compliance with the statutory mandate of Section 146 of the MVA (Motor Vehicles Act). This may be done through the use of ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras," the court, which had issued a slew of directions, said.

Section 146 of the MVA deals with necessity of insurance against third party risk.