SC allows Centre's plea to probe false Covid-19 ex-gratia claims

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Centre to conduct an inquiry into fake ex-gratia claims on the death of kin due to COVID-19 while observing that nobody can be permitted to avail the compensation by making a false claim or submitting the false certificate.

A bench of Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna said that this Court had passed the order for payment of ex-gratia amount keeping in mind the "humanity and sufferings" of the family members who lost their kins due to COVID-19.

The apex court said "nobody can be permitted to misuse" the compensation and it is also against "morality and is unethical", which can never be accepted.

Therefore, it directed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to carry out random scrutiny of the 5 per cent of the claim applications filed in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and Maharashtra.

The top court directed state governments to assist the Centre in carrying out the scrutiny of the claim applications and submit all the necessary particulars of the respective claims that have been attended to or processed to the Health Ministry.

"The Ministry and NDMA shall carry out the scrutiny within a period of three months from today and submit the report before this Court. If it is found that anybody has made a fake claim, the same shall be considered under Section 52 (Punishment for false claim) of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and liable to be punished accordingly," the bench stated in the order.

Under section 52 of the Disaster Management Act, a person convicted for making fake claims will be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, and also with a fine.

"Nobody can be permitted to avail the ex-gratia compensation by making a false claim and/or submitting the false certificate. A claimant is entitled to ex-gratia of Rs 50,000 being a kin/family member of those, who died due to COVID-19. Earlier, this Court passed the order directing the Union of India/ NDMA/ concerned states to pay ex-gratia amount keeping in mind the humanity and keeping in mind the suffering of the family members who lost one of their family members due to COVID-19. Therefore, nobody can be permitted to misuse the same and it is also against morality and is unethical, which can never be accepted," the bench stated in its order.

"Therefore, to start with a random scrutiny of the 5 per cent of the claim applications filed in the States of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and Maharashtra shall be made at the first instance," it added.

It also set a time limit of 60 days for claims for deaths up to March 20, 2022, and 90 days for future claimants to claim Rs 50,000 ex gratia compensation.

"The family would need some reasonable time to recover from the death and sorrow and file the claim. Therefore, we deem it appropriate to fix the outer limit of 60 days from today to file the claims for compensation in case the death occurred due to COVID-19 prior to March 20, 2022. For future deaths, 90 days' time is provided from the date of death due to COVID-19 to file the claim for compensation," the order stated.

The earlier order to process the claims and to make the actual payment of compensation within a period of 30 days from the date of receipt of a claim is ordered to be continued, it added.

The bench also clarified that in case of extreme hardship any claimant could not make an application within the time prescribed, it will be open for the claimant to approach the Grievance Redressal Committee and make the claim through Committee which shall be considered by it on case to case basis and if it is found that a particular claimant could not make the claim within the stipulated time which was beyond their control his/her case may be considered on merits.

The top court's order came on an application of the Central government seeking a setting of the deadline of four weeks to claim the ex gratia payment from authorities on the death of kin due to COVID-19.

"Though the fatality rate due to COVID-19 has substantially decreased, it may be desirable to direct that if any death takes place due to COVID-19 henceforth, the eligible claimant can move a competent authority within a period of four weeks from the death," the plea said.

The application stated that as both the state and Central governments have received reports regarding the submission of fake/forged claims for COVID-19 ex-gratia compensation, the Centre asked the court to allow a probe into such instances.

The petition was filed by lawyer-cum-petitioner, Gaurav Kumar Bansal, seeking an ex-gratia compensation for those family members, who died due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier, the top court had approved the Centre's disaster management guidelines on payment of Rs 50,000 ex-gratia compensation to the next kin of those who died of Covid-19 deaths and said the money to be disbursed within 30 days of applying.

( With inputs from ANI )