To the consternation of the general insurers, who do motor business, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had issued a directive under Motor Vehicle Accident Fund scheme saying that the insurers have to even fund the cashless medical care of victims of accidents involving uninsured vehicles during golden hour
New Delhi/Hyderabad: In an surprising move, the General Insurance Council (GI Council), the official representative body of the Indian general insurers consisting of private sector and PSU general insurers, has sued the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) in Delhi High Court for asking the general insurers to pay for the cashless treatment of victims of road accidents, involving even uninsured vehicles, during the golden hour, under its new scheme-Motor Vehicle Accident Fund(MVAF).
The GI Council has pleaded in the Delhi High Court to cancel the order and the court has since stayed the move of the MoRTH.
Earlier, The government had amended the Motor Vehicle Act 1988, in 2019 and notified it in 2022 creating three funds under MVAF for providing cashless treatment, upto Rs 1.5 lakhs, to the victims of growing number of victims of road accidents during the golden hour which is the first hour after a road accident with casualties, during which time if a seriously injured person is attended to by the emergency services and taken to a medical center, their chances of survival increase dramatically.
The three funds which have been set up under MVAF are: Account for insured vehicle, Account for uninsured vehicle or hit and run motor accidents and Hit and Run Compensation Amount.
The Act also specified how the funds for each of the schemes have to be mobilised for the payment of medical care expenses upto Rs 1.5 lakhs of road accident victims .
In `Account for uninsured vehicle or hit and run motor accidents’, the Act had provided four ways to raise the funds .
They are-the fee collected by the central government for using certain section of National Highways(user fees) as per the National Highways Rules 2008, through budgetary grant from the Consolidated Fund of India, fine collected under Section198 and lastly any other source as may be specified by the central government.
A few months back, to the utter consternation of the general insurers, who do motor business, the MoRTH had preferred to overlook the first three sources of funding for “Account for uninsured vehicle or hit and run motor accidents’ and issued a directive under `other source as may be specified by the central government‘, saying that the insurers have to fund this.
This was not acceptable to general insurers who were caught off the guard as the MoRTH is practically forcing them to pay for the vehicles which have not been insured by them.
The GI Council had consulted senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhv to file a case against MoRTH in the Delhi High Court.
MoRTH sources said efforts are on to persuade GI Council to withdraw the case.
Meanwhile, the MoRTH, in line with the government’s policy to reduce fatalities due to road accidents and the legal mandate under section 162 of Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, has launched a pilot program to provide cashless treatment to the victims of road accidents caused by the use of motor vehicles.
The pilot program, has been initiated in Chandigarh and is aimed at establishing an ecosystem for providing timely medical care to the victims of road accidents, including during the golden hour.
Based on the outcome of the pilot program, expansion of the cashless treatment facility to the entire country will be considered.
The National Health Authority (NHA) is the implementing agency for the pilot program, in coordination with police, hospitals, State Health Agency (SHA) etc.
The broad contours of the pilot program are as follows:
• Victims entitled to cashless treatment upto a maximum of Rs. 1.5 lakhs per accident per person for a maximum period of 7 days from date of accident.
• Applicable to all road accidents caused by use of motor vehicle on any category of road.
• AB PM-JAY packages for trauma and polytrauma cases being co-opted.
• Claims raised by hospitals for providing treatment to be reimbursed from the MVAF.
The program is being implemented through an IT platform combining the functionalities of eDAR application of MoRTH and Transaction Management System (TMS) of NHA.