Bank takes widow’s Rs15,000 claim all the way to SC

A village cooperative bank that’s supposed to help poor and landless farmers with subsidies and easy small loan for purchasing cattle is found to have opened its coffers in litigating with a poor widow all the way to  the Supreme Court resisting the petty claim for the death of her mulching buffalo in 2001.

Hearing the case, the top court warned that the government and its instrumentalities must shun trivial litigation and resolve them by adopting ‘give and take’ attitude instead of litigation otherwise both the institutions and court “will sink”.

The warning came in a case initiated by a Gurgaon-based Gramin Bank that used public money in the litigation cost besides the various allowances its officials received in pursuing a fight against a poor widow who had a decree for compensation of Rs 3000 for the accidental death of her buffalo in 2001.

“It is the poor luck of the bank that its appeal has come before us,” an anguished bench of Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra observed as it rejected the bank’s appeal against the directives passed by all the subordinate consumer grievances resolution tribunals regarding payment of compensation of Rs 15,000 to Khazani.

Khazani had paid the insurance premium of Rs 759 to the New India Insurance Company.  When her insured cattle died she approached the bank and the insurance company but it didn’t yield any result.

A subordinate consumer tribunal ordered that she should be compensated for the loss off her animal and also should be paid Rs 3,000 cost with 6 per cent interest. But the bank took it as its defeat and pursued litigation. 

“Let God save the gramins (villagers),” the court observed as it imposed a cost of Rs10,000 on the bank and asked it pay this money within a month to Khazani.  The judges noted that the bank now has to spend altogether Rs 25,950  for  a  claim of Rs. 5,000 apart from the travelling expenses of  the bank officials.

“The 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, nationalized or private, come to  courts  may be due to ego clash or to save the officers’ skin,” the court noted with concern.

The court warned that if the institutions don’t take “ earnest  efforts”  to  resolve  the disputes at their end by adopting “some give  and  take”  attitude, “both” will sink.

Unless serious  questions  of  law of general importance arise for consideration or a question which affects large  number of persons or the stakes  are  very  high,  courts  jurisdiction  cannot  be invoked for  resolution  of  small  and  trivial  matters, the court ruled.