( 1 ) THIS writ petition under Article 227 of the constitution of India arose from an execution of an award in favour of the claimant in a motor accident case and discloses a tortuous route a motor accident victim as a claimant has to follow in order to recover dues by being driven to the resort to the provisions of Section 174 of the Motor Vehicles Act (hereinafter referred to as the act ). In so far as the petition on merits is concerned, it related to a penalty imposed on petitioner No. 2 who is the Regional Manager of the petitioner No. 1 company, who in the writ petition has inter alia averred that it is a government owned nationalized insurance company and that part of the matter has already been decided as the penalty imposed has been waived by this Court by its order dated 12th August, 2005. However, since the recovery of the awarded amount to the legal heirs of the motor accident claimant or the claimant itself takes considerable time inspite of awards of Motor Accidents claim Tribunals (hereinafter referred to as MACT) in the claimants favour, this Court had appointed Mr. Ashok chhabra as Amicus Curiae and he has ably assisted this court to enable this Court to issue general directions to all Motor Accident Claims Tribunals in Delhi. The Court has also received able assistance from the learned counsel for petitioner No. 1 company, Mr. P. K. Seth.

( 2 ) THE submission made by Mr. Chhabra disclosed that even after an award is passed in favour of a party under Section 168 of the Act, an insurance company takes considerable time in making payment even though a large number of them are public sector companies. Section 168 (d) of the Act reads as under:

168. Award of the Claims Tribunal. . . . . . . . (3) When an award is made under this section, the person who is required to pay any amount in terms of such award shall, within thirty days of the date of announcing the award by the Claims Tribunal, deposit the entire amount awarded in such manner as the Claims Tribunal may direct.

( 3 ) EVEN though the amount awarded by the MACT as per the mandate of Section 168 (3) is required to be deposited within thirty days of announcing the award, this stipulated period of 30 days under Section 168 (3) has been completely eroded in practice. The tortuous route of Section 174 of the Act has thus to be resorted to routinely by the claimants and the recovery eventually depends upon the interest if any taken by the Collector to recover the awarded amount from insurer as arrears of land revenue under Section 174 of the Act which reads as follows:-

174. Recovery of money from insurer as arrears of land revenue where any amount is due from any person under an award, the Claims Tribunal may, on an application made to it by the person entitled to the amount, issue a certificate for the amount to the Collector and the Collector shall proceed to recover the same in the same manner as an arrear of land revenue.

( 4 ) MR. P. K. Seth, the learned counsel for the petitioner NO. 1 has submitted that since Section 174 of the Act provides for the only prescribed manner of recovery, no further orders are required to be passed by this Court and since CPC is not directly applicable, directions analogous to CPC so as to enable the Tribunal to become a Court ought not to be given by this Court.

( 5 ) IN my view the victims of motor accidents are either persons disabled or are legal heirs of the deceased and the compensation to the such helpless victims of such accidents is indeed an ameliorative and social piece of legislation and accordingly such relief cannot be bound down by a narrow and constricted meaning of the Act and ought to receive a liberal interpretation. Section 174 in my view is only one of the modes of recovery and does not preclude other methods. Section 168 (3) mandates that the awarded amount is to be deposited within 30 days of the pronouncement of the award. In any event a public sector Insurance company cannot be heard t