“The time granted to the government has expired on March 15, 2025. According to us, this is a very serious breach and violation of not only orders of this court but its a case of failure to implement a very beneficial section in the statute…We direct the Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to personally remain present through video conferencing and explain the default on the part of the central government,” the bench said.

Justice Oka added, “We have long experience. Only when we get top government officials here, they they take the orders of the court seriously. Otherwise they won’t take it (seriously).”

Appearing for the Ministry, Additional Solicitor General Vikramjeet Banerjee said that the scheme had been formulated but was facing some “bottlenecks” in operationalising it.

But Justice Oka said, “people are losing lives because of your default. We can’t take it lightly.”

The judge added, “we are making it very clear. For this we will issue notice of contempt also if we find no that progress is made…This is your own legislation. People are loosing lives because there is no cashless treatment.”

Banerjee said, “we have held a large number of meetings, we have tried to do as much as possible.”

Justice Oka said, “we are not blaming anybody. It’s your legislation. It has remained unimplemented…We will hear the secretary. Let him explain. Otherwise, we are putting you to notice, we will take action under contempt. We are spending time and passing such orders.”

The SC had on January 8 this year asked the government to come out with the scheme for the cashless medical treatment of motor accident victims in the “golden hour” period by March 14.

As per Section 2(12-A) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, golden hour refers to the one-hour window following a traumatic injury under which a timely medical intervention will most likely prevent death.