BHAGWATI PRASAD, J. - (1.) THIS special appeal has been filed by the Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation impugning a judgment of the learned Single Judge dated April 10, 1996 as passed in S.B. Civil Misc. Appeal No. 532/94 whereby the learned Single Judge in an appeal preferred by the Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation decided not to interfere with the judgment and award dated 4th June, 1994 passed by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Sojat in Claims Case No. 304/92(50/85) in fixing the quantum of the award at Rs. 1,37,000/ -
(2.) THE accident took place on 4th October, 1984 and admittedly, there is a concurrent finding that the Roadways Bus RRG 9902 dashed against the victim, who was going on bicycle and that the accident had occurred because of the rash and negligent driving of the Bus. The widow and children of the deceased Ghisu claimed compensation to the tune of Rs. 4 lacs, but the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal at Sojat awarded a sum of Rs. 1,37,000/ - on making a computation about the income of the deceased at Rs. 500/ - P.M. and by applying a multiplier of 15. According to the Tribunal, the annual dependency being Rs. 8100/ -, the pecuniary loss to the claimants came to about Rs. 1,21,500/ - by applying the multiplier of 15. The Tribunal thus computed that Rs. 1,26,000/ - would be the total loss of dependency and that a sum of Rs. 5,000/ - was taken as loss of consortium and Rs. 6,000/ -for the loss of love and affection. Thus, a total amount of Rs. 1,37,000/ -was awarded. The learned Single Judge went through the computation all by himself of his own and found that the amounts as arrived at by the Tribunal could not be held to be excessive. It is indeed true that both the Tribunal as well as the learned Single Judge thought that the present income of the deceased Ghisu should be doubled for arriving at the just compensation and out of the amount of Rs. 1200/ - which was arrived at by doubling the amount of Rs. 600/ - which was earned by the deceased towards his daily wages spread all through out the month, one third was left out as expenditure to himself and the loss of dependency was arrived at Rs. 800/ - p.m. and at Rs. 9600/ - per annum. To this amount of Rs. 9600/ -, the multiplier of 15 was applied so as to come to the total loss of dependency at Rs. 1,44,000/ -. Taking into consideration that the heirs and legal representatives of deceased the victim -Ghisu did not prefer any appeal before the High Court, the learned Single Judge thought that it could not be said that the Tribunal has erred in awarding Rs. 1,26,000/ -towards the total loss of annual dependency to which Rs. 5000/ - was added towards the loss of consortium and another sum of 6,000/ -towards the loss of love and affection.
(3.) MR . Bhati, learned advocate appearing for the appellant -Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation contended before us by citing a decision of the Supreme Court in U.P. State Road Transport Corporation and Ors. v. Trilok Chandra and Ors. reported in JT 1996(5) SC 356 that the multiplier is not exceed 18. In this judgment, of -course, some observations were made as regards the improvement of the process of calculations over the previous judgment in General Manager, Kerala State Road Transport, Trivandrum v. Susamma Thomas reported in : AIR1994SC1631 . In that judgment also it was found that the calculations of compensation and the amount. worked out in the schedule did suffer from several defects, but still then the Supreme Court did not interfere with the amount awarded, since in the view of the Supreme Court, while the multiplier used was excessive, the Supreme Court itself was satisfied that a very low multiplicand was used as the loss of dependency. The Supreme Court observed that if it was to correct the multiplicand and use the correct multiplier, the compensation would work out to near about the same figure and, therefore, while agreeing with the contentions of the appellant -U.P. State Road Transport Corporation and Ors., the Supreme Court expressed its disinclination to interfere with the figure of compensation, even though it observed that the Tribunal or the High Court fell into an error in the choice of the multiplier and allowed the appeal to that extent, but the Supreme Court in an ultimate analysis did not interfere with the quantum of compensation.;