National Consumer Commission reverses order for fact suppression by insurance policy holder

MUMBAI: The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission set aside orders passed by a state commission and district forum by allowing a complaint against LIC where a insurance policy holder had suppressed facts.
The commission on Friday held that since " complainants have not come with clean hands complaint was liable to be dismissed.''
The case originated in Karnataka.The complainant's father Manje Gowda an agriculturist had taken an insurance policy from Life Insurance Corporation of India, in Bangalore for Rs 1 lakh. He said he was healthy, but after his death within two years in 2003, LIC said it found out that he had suffered from an from Ischemic heart disease for about one year and 10 months before issuance of policy and had been treated at different hospitals. He suppressed this fact in the proposal form, said LIC which rejected the claim from his daughter.
The case then landed in the district forum which allowed the claim and when LIC went in appeal, the Karnataka State commission in 2007 dismissed the appeal.
LIC thus filed a revision petition in the National Commission which allowed it and set aside both the order passed against the insurance major earlier.