SC seeks wage notices to expedite accident claims

THe sublime margaret court has directed all states and unification territories (UTs) to bow a comprehensive digest of notifications they have issued on minimum wages, noting that the lack of uniform and readily accessible data has made adjudication under the Motor Vehicles Act (MVA) increasingly cumbersome.Flagging persistent difficulties in determining appropriate compensation in motor accident claims, a bench of justices Sanjay Karol and N Kotiswar Singh said it had become “quite a difficult task” for the top court to locate the correct minimum wage notification applicable at the time of an accident, given the periodic revisions of such notifications and the inconsistency with which states upload updated information on their official websites.To address this, the bench directed the chief secretaries of all states and UTs to submit their respective compilations of minimum wage notifications within 12 weeks. The court further ordered that authorities must electronically furnish periodically revised notifications so that the latest authoritative documents remain available for judicial reference.“Once the information is received, the same should be scanned and kept in the custody of the Centre for Research and Planning, Supreme Court of India from where the same be easily accessible to all concerned,” the bench said in a recent judgment.“The question of application of minimum wages comes up in many cases before this Court,” it noted, pointing out that some states had uploaded wage notifications only partially, while others showed consistency only certain years onward. The court said the lack of reliable and complete data often hampered judicial determination and necessitated avoidable litigation on issues that should be purely factual.Minimum wages play a crucial role in the assessment of compensation under MVA, particularly in cases involving self-employed persons, daily wage earners, informal workers, homemakers and children, where documentary proof of income is often unavailable. Courts frequently rely on prevailing minimum wage notifications to arrive at a reasonable estimate of notional income, which forms the foundation for calculating loss of dependency, which is the largest component of compensation in fatal accident cases.Over the years, the Supreme Court has consistently moved away from rigid reliance on outdated statutory schedules and has instead emphasised realistic income assessment based on contemporary economic conditions, including minimum wages fixed by states under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. However, the absence of a centralised, authoritative repository of minimum wage notifications has often led to disputes, delays and inconsistent outcomes across tribunals and courts, with litigants and judges alike struggling to ascertain the correct wage applicable on the date of an accident.The directions were issued while the bench was hearing an appeal arising from a motor accident that occurred in July 2013, in which a father and his nine-year-old son died after a truck hit the motorcycle they were travelling on. The rash and negligent driving of the truck, the deaths, and the insurer’s liability were not in dispute.The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT), Gwalior, had passed a common award in January 2015 granting compensation to the family. While compensation for the father was not challenged, the award relating to the minor son was taken up before the Madhya Pradesh high court, which enhanced the compensation by ₹1 lakh in May 2024, taking the total to ₹3.5 lakh.Still dissatisfied, the claimants approached the Supreme Court, contending that the calculation of notional income for the deceased child and the award under conventional heads were legally flawed. Allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court noted that both the tribunal and the high court had relied on the Second Schedule to the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, which was introduced in 1994 and has since been repeatedly criticised for being disconnected from current economic realities.“In quite a few judgments it has been observed that the Second Schedule to the MV Act having been brought in the year 1994 is disconnected from ground economic realities and therefore is not appropriate to be relied on,” said the bench, citing decisions in Puttamma Vs KL Narayana Reddy (2013) and Meena Devi Vs Nunu Chand Mahto (2023).The court also noted that the high court had failed to apply the Constitution Bench ruling in National Insurance Co Ltd Vs Pranay Sethi (2017), which laid down binding principles on the computation of compensation under conventional heads such as loss of consortium, funeral expenses and loss of estate.Reassessing the compensation on the touchstone of “just and fair compensation”, the bench recalculated the notional income of the deceased child on the basis of minimum wages applicable to skilled labour at the relevant time and fixed the monthly income at ₹6,390. The court ultimately awarded a total compensation of ₹11,96,068, directing that interest be paid from the date of filing of the claim petition and that the amount be released within eight weeks.The bench also recorded its appreciation for the assistance rendered by amici curiae in the case, advocates Bhanu Thakur and Shalini Tripathi.