Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member

Challenging the impugned order as above, whereby the complaint case has been allowed, this Appeal is moved by Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Co. Ltd.

The Respondent filed the complaint case over non-settlement of his insurance claim by the Appellants.  As the Appellants did not contest the case, the same was decided ex parte.

I heard both sides in the matter.

Disputing the very legality of the order impugned, Ld. Advocate for the Appellants submitted that, although on the scheduled date of hearing, one of the Ld. Members of the Bench was not physically present, most arbitrarily, she wrote the impugned order on behalf of the Bench.  In support of such content, Ld. Advocate drew my attention to the order sheet of the Ld. District Forum dated 07-07-2015. Accordingly, he prayed for setting aside the said order.

I carefully perused the material on record, including the disputed order sheet dated 07-07-2015.  It transpires from the same that on that day, out of the  3 Ld. Members of the Bench, only two, viz., M/s B. D. Nanda and A. K. Pathak were present while the other Ld. Member, Smt. Jhumki Saha was marked absent on that day.  In view of this, needless to say, it was highly improper on her part to write the final order on behalf of the entire Bench and pronounce it in the open Ejlas.  For this very reason, the impugned order is not enforceable in law.  Accordingly, I am constrained to set aside the same with a direction to the Ld. District Forum to preach extreme caution in future to avoid recurrence of such unfortunate developments.

The Appeal, accordingly, succeeds in part.  Parties to appear before the Ld. District Forum on 20-09-2019 for fresh adjudication of the case.  In the interests of natural justice, Appellants are permitted to submit their WV before the Ld. District Forum on the date fixed hereinabove.