Persons Without Papers, Rights of Illegal Immigrants toSeek Compensation Under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988

Abstract: India hosts an estimated 4.7 million documented foreign-born residents alongside a far larger undocumented population whose numbers remain contested. As participants in ordinary civic life, these individuals inevitably interact with legal institutions and may become victims of motor vehicle accidents. Against this demographic backdrop, a pressing legal question emerges: can a person present without legal authorisation invoke the protections of Indian law, specifically under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988?

Introduction

India's roads are among the most densely used in the world, shared by many, among them persons who have entered or remained in the country without legal authorisation. The Motor Vehicles Act,1988 (hereinafter "the Act") governs liability and compensation for motor accidents, and it does so across all categories without distinction as to the nationality or immigration status of the injured party.

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) from 2024, India hosts approximately 4.7 million foreign-born residents, accounting for roughly 0.3% of its total population. The National Register of Citizens process in Assam had, by January 2025, formally declared 165,992 individuals as irregular immigrants, and that figure covers only a single state. India has no centralized, real-time national database of undocumented immigrants, and the most recent Census of 2011, while tracking residents' birthplaces, does not record legal status.

Against this backdrop, the central legal question this article addresses is the following: if a person has no documents to verify their presence in Indian soil, can that same person invoke a right conferred by the law of that same land to claim compensation for an injury suffered on its territory? This question sits at the crossroads of constitutional law and domestic statutory interpretation.

The Motor Vehicles Act, 1988: Universal Coverage by Design

The Language of the Act

The Act is a statute of general application. Its liability and compensation provisions are drafted in universal terms. A bare reading of Section 140(1), which creates no-fault liability for death or permanent disablement resulting from motor accidents, provides: “Where death or permanent disablement of any person has resulted from an accident arising out of the use of a motor vehicle or motor vehicles, the owner of the vehicle shall, or, as the case may be, the owners of the vehicles shall, jointly and severally, be liable to pay compensation in respect of such death or disablement in accordance with the provisions of this section.”

(Emphasis supplied)

The beneficiary of this right is described throughout the Act as "any person." Not any citizen. Not any lawful resident. Not any person with valid immigration documents. Any person. This echoes the constitutional language of Articles 14 and 21, and it is equally deliberate.

In furtherance, the Section 140(4) reads as “[Claim] shall not be defeated by reason of any wrongful act, neglect or default of the person in respect of whose death or permanent disablement the claim has been made nor shall the quantum of compensation recoverable in respect of such death or permanent disablement be reduced on the basis of the share of such person in the responsibility for such death or permanent disablement”

(Emphasis supplied)

The bare reading of Section 141 of the Act makes clear that the right to claim under Section 140 is in addition to any other right to claim compensation under the Act or under any other law in force. The victim of a motor accident who is an undocumented immigrant, therefore, has access to both no-fault compensation and fault-based claims.

The Purpose of the Act

The Act is a piece of social welfare legislation. The use of motor vehicles is not without its risks, and a person injured through the operation of such a vehicle should not be left without a remedy merely because proving negligence is difficult. Excluding undocumented immigrants from the Act's protections would introduce a distinction the legislature itself did not make and would be contrary to the constitutional values of equality and constitutional morality.

The Supreme Court's Expansive Interpretation of Article 21

The Supreme Court of India has, through a long and consistent line of judgments, interpreted Article 21 in the broadest possible terms. In the landmark decision in Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) AIR 597, the Court broke decisively from a narrow reading of Article 21 and held that the "right to life" is not merely the right to physical existence. It encompasses the right to live with dignity, to access justice, and to be treated as a full legal person. The Hon’ble Court adopted the golden rule from Maneka Gandhi, namely that any procedure that deprives a person of life or liberty must be fair, just, and reasonable, and not arbitrary or oppressive.

If the right to life includes the right to live with dignity and to access a remedy for wrongs suffered, then the denial of compensation for a motor accident injury caused by another person's use of a vehicle constitutes a deprivation of rights guaranteed under Article 21, regardless of the victim's immigration status.

The Supreme Court in National Human Rights Commission v. State of Arunachal Pradesh & Anr. (1996) AIR 1234 stated in clear and unambiguous terms that "the State is bound to protect the life and liberty of every human being, be he a citizen or otherwise." The question that might come to mind, for at least a few, is the interpretation of the preamble to the Indian Constitution, which starts with “We the people of India”. It is an introductory statement that outlines the nation's guiding principles, objectives, and the source of its authority. However, it must be cleared that the preamble is not a source of authoritative rights. The operative provisions that govern are the articles themselves. If the preamble is read as restricting all constitutional rights to Indians only, then it would create an arbitrary result with no hope for a foreign citizen to get access to justice, that in specific goes against the morals and values that the preamble sets for. To put simply, the preamble describes who authored the constitution, that is, the people of India, not who falls in its ambit.

Addressing theCounter-Argument: Can an Undocumented Presence Beget a Lawful and Documented Claim?

The most intuitive objection to the position advanced here may be framed thus: a person with no legal right to be in India cannot invoke its laws for protection. Since an undocumented immigrant may lawfully be deported under the relevant legislature, the State may equally deny them legal rights during that presence. This conflation of two distinct legal domains must be rejected.

Expulsion and Denial of Rights: Two Separate Domains

In Hans Muller of Nuremberg v. Superintendent, Presidency Jail, Calcutta (1955) AIR 367, the Supreme Court drew the crucial distinction between expulsion and the deprivation of fundamental rights, affirming that expulsion under the relevant legislature, 1946 did not in itself constitute an infringement of rights under Articles 14 and 21. However, it does not carry any ancillary power to deny access to the courts, withhold emergency medical care, or refuse statutory compensation.

The Central Government has broad powers to regulate the entry, stay, and eparture of foreigners, including the power to remove and impose restrictions on movement. But the power to regulate presence is not the power to extinguish legal personality. These remain, in law and in principle, entirely separate domains.

No provision of Indian law purports to extinguish the civil and constitutional rights of undocumented persons as a consequence of irregular status. The executive power to regulate or terminate a foreigner's presence does not automatically strip that person of their legal personality or their right to a remedy for injury. The right to life and to redress for its violation does not depend upon the legality of one's presence in a jurisdiction. It depends only on one's humanity, a condition that knows no borders.

Conclusion

In simple terms, the Act does not say "a citizen." It does not say "a lawful resident." It says "any person." The Constitution, read as the Supreme Court has consistently laid down, protects every human being on Indian soil. There is no immigration-status exception in either text, and nothing in the legislative record suggests one was meant to exist.

The State's power to regulate and remove undocumented immigrants is real and must be exercised through due process and lawful enforcement mechanisms rather than arbitrary or violent measures. This enforcement is not disputed, but it runs on a completely separate track from civil liability.

It is the laid law that the duty to protect life and liberty extends to every human being in India, not only to those with valid papers. Conditioning a statutory remedy on immigration status would mean reading a restriction into the Act that the legislature did not include. A vehicle does not ask for documents before it causes harm. The law, on this point, should work the same way