SC slams banks for petty litigation,troubling the helpless

A bench of justices K S Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra passed the judgement while dismissing the appeal of Gurgaon Gramin Bank which was refusing to concede the customer Smt Khazani’s plea for payment of Rs 15,000 insurance for her dead buffalo which was insured with the New India Assurance Company Ltd.

“Let God save the Gramins,” the bench observed while dismissing the bank’s appeal.

The woman had availed a loan through the bank for purchase of the buffalo and got it insured with the insurance company through the former,which in the event of its death was expected to facilitate the compensation.

But both the bank and the insurer refused to compensate her upon which she moved the district consumer forum in 2004 which ruled in her favour.

The bank’s appeal in the State Consumer Forum,Haryana and the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission were dismissed upon which it appealed in the apex court.

The apex court said that on several occasions,it had reminded the Central Government,States and other instrumentalities as well as to the various banking institutions to take earnest efforts to resolve the disputes at their end,but the problems persists. “Number of litigations in our country is on the rise,for small and trivial matters,people and sometimes Central and State Governments and their instrumentalities Banks,nationalised or private,come to courts,may be due to ego clash or to save the officers’ skin.

“For a paltry amount of Rs.15000,even according to the affidavit,bank has already spent a total amount of Rs 12,950. Remember,the buffalo had died 10 years back,but the litigation is not over,fight is still on for Rs.15,000.

“In our view,these types of litigation should be discouraged and message should also go,otherwise for all trivial and silly matters people will rush to this court,” the bench said.

Justice Radhakrishnan,writing the judgement,said driving poor gramins to various litigative forums should be strongly deprecated because they have also to spend large amounts for conducting litigation.

“We condemn this type of practice,unless the stake is very high or the matter affects large number of persons or affects a general policy of the Bank which has far-reaching consequences.

“The appeal is accordingly dismissed with cost of Rs. 10,000 to be paid by the bank to the first respondent within a period of one month.

“Resultantly,the Bank now has to spend altogether Rs. 25,950 for a claim of Rs.15,000,apart from to and fro travelling expenses of the Bank officials,” the apex court said.

The apex court further said that gramin banks should stand for the benefit of the gramins who sometimes avail of loan for buying buffaloes,to purchase agricultural

implements,manure,seeds and so on as their repayment,to a large extent,depends upon the income which they get out of that.

“Crop failure,due to drought or natural calamities,disease to cattle or their death may cause difficulties to gramins to repay the amount. Rather than coming to their rescue,banks often drive them to litigation leading them extreme penury,”the bench added.