The Supreme Court held that children of a person killed in a motor accident are entitled to parental consortium, faulting the Tribunal and High Court for omitting it, and enhanced the compensation.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has held that the children of a person killed in a motor accident are entitled to compensation under the head of “parental consortium,” ruling that both the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal and the Telangana High Court had erred in a fatal-accident claim by awarding a token sum to the widow and nothing at all to the children under this head [Sameem Begum and Others v. K. Venkat Swamy and Another].
A Bench of Justices Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh and N.V. Anjaria enhanced the total compensation payable to the widow and three children of the deceased from ₹11,00,672 to ₹12,47,272, correcting the omission of consortium awards to the children.
The central principle: consortium is not only for the spouse
The core of the judgment is its application of the settled but frequently-overlooked rule that “consortium,” as a head of motor-accident compensation, is not confined to the surviving spouse.
The Court explained, drawing on its earlier decisions in Magma General Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Nanu Ram and National Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Pranay Sethi, that consortium is a compendious term encompassing three distinct forms. Spousal consortium compensates the surviving husband or wife for the loss of the company, society, affection and conjugal relations of the deceased. Parental consortium is awarded to a child on the premature death of a parent, in the nature of compensation for the parental aid, protection, affection, guidance and training the child would have received had the parent lived. Filial consortium is the right of parents to be compensated on the accidental death of a child. Each is a recognised, compensable loss.
The practical significance is that a child who loses a parent in a road accident has an independent claim under the parental-consortium head — a claim that exists in its own right and is not subsumed within the compensation awarded to the surviving spouse.
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Where the courts below went wrong
Applying that principle, the Court found clear error in both the Tribunal’s and the High Court’s awards.
The Tribunal, it held, had committed a “manifest error” in granting only ₹5,000 to the widow under the consortium head and awarding no parental consortium at all to the children. The High Court, while enhancing the overall compensation, had granted a lump sum of ₹77,000 across all the conventional heads together, and had thereby “missed its legal duty” to ensure that the amount due under the consortium head was separately and correctly awarded in accordance with law.
The Court noted that it was undisputed that the three children were dependants of the deceased, and that they ought therefore to have been treated as legal representatives entitled to parental consortium. On the settled law — reflected in Manjuri Bera v. Oriental Insurance Co. and National Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Birender — the Court reiterated that the entitlement of a legal representative to compensation does not cease merely because that representative was not financially dependent on the deceased; it is the devolution of the estate, not actual dependency alone, that matters.
The Pranay Sethi framework applied
On quantum, the Court applied the standardised conventional-head figures laid down by the Constitution Bench in Pranay Sethi, under which loss of consortium is fixed at ₹40,000, and the conventional amounts are to be enhanced by 10% every three years to keep pace with inflation.
Applying the 10% escalation, the Court fixed consortium at ₹48,400 for each claimant — spousal consortium for the widow, and parental consortium for each of the three children — taking the total under this head to ₹1,93,600. It also raised the awards for funeral expenses and loss of estate from ₹10,000 each to ₹15,000 each, in line with the Pranay Sethi figures, while retaining the High Court’s computation of loss of dependency at ₹10,23,672.
The Court’s insistence on treating consortium as a per-claimant entitlement, rather than a single family sum, is the operative discipline of the judgment: each dependant’s loss is separately compensable, and lumping the conventional heads together defeats the requirement of arriving at “just compensation.”
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The income question
The Court also touched on a second ground the appellants had urged — that the deceased’s monthly income ought to have been taken as ₹9,000, as reflected in a salary certificate, rather than ₹7,000. Although notice had been issued confined to the parental-consortium question, the Court examined this contention as well in the interest of a comprehensive approach.
It declined to disturb the finding on income. The Tribunal had relied on the testimony of the director of the deceased’s employer, who deposed that the salary was ₹7,000 per month, and the Court held that in adopting that figure the Tribunal had committed no error.
The result
Recalculating the award, the Court arrived at a total of ₹12,47,272, an enhancement of ₹1,46,600 over the High Court’s figure. It directed the insurance company to deposit the additional amount, with interest at 7.5% per annum from the date of the petition until realisation, with the Tribunal within six weeks, to be released to each of the appellants in equal proportion by direct credit to their bank accounts. The High Court’s award was modified to that extent, and the appeal allowed.
Case Title: Sameem Begum and Others v. K. Venkat Swamy and Another [Civil Appeal arising out of SLP (C) No. 18553 of 2023]
Bench: Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh and Justice N.V. Anjaria
Citation: 2026 INSC 864
Date of Judgment: August 14, 2026