The National Insurance Company Ltd has been ticked off by a district consumer forum for its “high handedness” of dismissing an insurance policy holder’s claim for compensation for his car, damaged in a road mishap, on the ground that his documents were not valid.
Holding the insurance company to be “highly negligent,” the Delhi District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum directed it to pay a compensation of Rs 20,000 to complainant Raghunath Prasad Tyagi for harassing him.
The bench also directed it to pay him a compensation of Rs 1,70,598 as recommended by the company’s surveyor saying the “insurance company was highly negligent and deficient in service in not considering his claim.”
The district consumer forum’s order came on a plea by Tyagi, accusing the state insurance firm denying him the compensation for damages sustained by his car in a mishap, in which its driver and a passenger had lost their lives.
Relying upon the validity of the driver’s driving licence, the firm had awarded compensation to kins of both the driver and the passenger, but it has rejected his claim for compensation against damages to the vehicle, saying the driver did not have a valid licence, Tyagi had said in his complaint.
The forum also held that documents, which the insurance firm was not considering for the claim, were already validated by a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) here as the company itself had agreed before the tribunal that the driving license was valid.
“The deficiency in service on the part of the respondent (insurance firm) in this case is writ large. In the MACT case, driving license verification report was filed by the insurance company itself showing that driving license was found valid on the date of accident.
The district forum came down heavily upon the insurance firm for what it said was its outright high-handedness in rejecting the car insurance policy holder’s claim.
“It was just high-handedness of the insurance company that in spite of the verification report of the driving license, they took a plea in this case that driver was not holding a valid driving license and case was closed,” said the bench presided over by Bimla Makin.
Tyagi, in his plea, had said that despite complying with all the formalities and even after several requests and visits to the firm’s office, his claim was not settled.
He said his car was insured with the insurance firm from January 2005 to November 2006 and had met with an accident near Panipat Road, Haryana in April 2006 in which the driver and the passengers of the car had expired.
He said he had approached the insurance firm for settling the claim.