Telangana High Court asks DGP for better report

Source: deccanchronicle.com

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court directed the Director General of Police to submit the latest statistics related of how many road accidents had occurred in the first six months of 2019 and how many were reported to the claims tribunal within the prescribed 30 days so that the kith and kin of the deceased could get compensation and insurance amount.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice Shameem Akther was irked by the submission of a report containing irrelevant data by the DGP on the implementation of sub-section (6) of Section 158 of the Motor Vehicle Act.

The bench was dealing with a suo motu public interest litigation on the directions of the Supreme Court, which deals with the implementation of sub-section (6) of Section 158 of the Motor Vehicle Act.

The section says that the in-charge police officer of the police station concerned shall forward a copy of the accident information to the respective claims tribunal and mark a copy to the owner and insurer within 30 days of the accident.

Noticing that this provision of the MV Act was not being followed properly and effectively operated in the state, the High Court took it up suo motu notice in March 2019 and directed the DGP to submit a statistical report.

The bench while going through the report submitted by the DGP, on Thursday expressed discontentment and observed that the report was vague.

In the report, the statistics of 2009 and some other years were submitted. It contained information about review programmes related to this issue through video conference by the DGP and memos served to all unit heads.

After going through the report, Justice Chauhan said, “The report is an eyewash. Merely issuing me-mos to the unit heads and conducting video conferences will not suffice. We want to know the concrete measures taken to implement the provision.”

The bench directed the authorities to submit information re-garding accident information reports sent to the tribunals by the police officers concerned and the accidents that occur-red from January 1 to June 30, 2019.