Court No. - 34

Case :- WRIT - C No. - 2805 of 2023

Petitioner :- Icici Lombard General Insurance Co. Ltd.

Respondent :- Permanent Lok Adalat And Another

Counsel for Petitioner :- Pawan Kumar Singh

Counsel for Respondent :- Ajay Kumar Chaurasia

Hon'ble Saurabh Shyam Shamshery,J.

Learned counsel for the petitioner submits that this matter is

squarely covered by a judgment of this Court in Writ-C No.

28999 of 2013 (Nitin Kumar vs. Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd.

and others, decided on 16.12.2021) as admittedly the

Permanent Lok Adalat has not complied with the mandatory

provisions of Section 22 (C) of Legal Services Authorities Act,

1987.

The Supreme Court in Canara Bank vs. G.S. Jayarama (2022)

7 SCC 776 and in para 44 Court held as under:

"44. At the same time, the Division Bench in its impugned

judgement also noted that the Permanent Lok Adalat failed to

follow the mandatory conciliation proceedings in the present

case. This observation is correct since the award of the

Permanent Lok Adalat does not indicate any attempt made by it

to propose terms of settlement to the parties and their rejection.

It states that once the respondent and his guarantor did not

appear, it adjudicated the dispute on merits in favour of the

respondent. For the reasons mentioned earlier in this judgment,

the Permanent Lok Adalat could not have done so. Therefore,

on this point only, we uphold the final judgment of the Division

Bench setting aside the award dated 19 November 2014 of the

Permanent Lok Adalat.?"

In view of above discussion, impugned order dated 29.6.2022 is

set-aside and the matter is remanded back to Prescribed

Authority to decide afresh after complying with mandatory

provisions of conciliation as held in Canara Bank (supra).

With the aforesaid observation/direction, this writ petition is

disposed of.

Learned counsel for parties undertakes that they will appear on

27.2.2023 and thereafter the Permanent Lok Adalat will

conclude the proceedings.

Order Date :- 13.2.2023

SB

Digitally signed by :-

SANDEEP BHATTACHARYA

High Court of Judicature at Allahabad