MACT (Motor Accident Claims Tribunal)

The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) is a quasi-judicial body constituted under Section 165 of the Motor Vehicles Act 1988 to adjudicate compensation claims arising from motor accidents involving death, bodily injury, or property damage. Every Indian district has one or more MACT benches, presided over by a judicial officer with civil-judge or senior-civil-judge experience. The tribunal hears claims from victims (or their legal representatives in fatal-accident cases) against the offending vehicle's owner, driver, and insurer, and awards compensation under the principle that the wrongdoer should compensate the victim for the loss caused.

MACT compensation is calculated using a structured framework. For death claims, the tribunal applies the multiplier method endorsed by the Supreme Court in the Sarla Verma and Pranay Sethi judgments — the deceased's annual income (with future-prospects increment), reduced for personal expenses (one-third for married deceased with dependents, half for unmarried), multiplied by an age-based multiplier (16 at age 20-25, declining to 5 at age 60-65), plus conventional heads (loss of consortium, loss of estate, funeral expenses). For injury claims, compensation covers medical expenses, loss of income during recovery, loss of future earning capacity, and pain and suffering.

Worked example: a 35-year-old salaried earner with annual income of ₹8 lakh is fatally injured by an insured truck. Under the Pranay Sethi framework, future-prospects add 40% to the income for permanent salaried employees below age 40, taking notional annual income to ₹11. 2 lakh.

Personal expenses reduce this by one-third (assuming wife and two children) to roughly ₹7. 5 lakh of dependency loss per year. Multiplier at age 35 is 16, taking the dependency calculation to ₹1.

2 crore. Adding ₹40,000 for loss of estate, ₹40,000 for funeral expenses, and ₹40,000 for each dependent's loss of consortium, the total compensation award is in the range of ₹1. 21 crore to ₹1.

23 crore, payable by the insurer of the offending vehicle under the unlimited statutory third-party cover. A common misconception is that 'MACT compensation is paid by the government'. It is not — MACT awards are paid by the offending vehicle's insurer (under the third-party liability cover) or by the owner directly if the vehicle was uninsured (with the Solatium Fund providing a limited fallback for hit-and-run cases).

Another common misconception is that 'MACT awards are immediate'. The process is faster than civil-court litigation but still typically takes 18 months to 3 years from filing to award, with appeals possible at the High Court. Related: third-party-liability, motor-accident-claims, irdai.