In all these appeals, the common defence raised by the Insurance Companies is that they are not liable to pay compensation to a third party, injured or the legal representatives of the deceased, on the ground that the driver of the offending vehicle, insured with them, did not possess a valid and effective driving licence, required licence for that kind of vehicle, not renewed the licence, at the time of accident and thus, there is a breach of policy condition and violation of statutory provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.

2. During the course of hearing of these appeals, when the learned counsel for the Insurance Companies were posed with a question as to why, the Insurance Companies file appeals, when they are given liberty to recover the amount from the insured, and consistently raise a plea to avoid their liability to pay compensation to third party accident victims, inspite of definite pronouncement by the Larger Benches of the Supreme Court in National Insurance Co. Ltd., v. Swaran Singh reported in 2004 ACJ 1, Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd., v. Meena Variyal reported in 2007 ACJ 1284 and other cases, as well as Division Bench judgments of this Court, it is the