SC seeks wage notices to expedite accident claims

The Supreme Court has directed all states and Union territories (UTs) to submit a comprehensive compilation 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.

- UtkarshAnand

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.