The Supreme Court on Wednesday voiced displeasure over delay in payment of ex-gratia to the kin to Covid-19 victims, and pulled up Chief Secretaries of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar for processing less number of applications than the actual deaths.
A bench of Justices M R Shah and Sanjiv Khanna said concerned authorities are not taking its directions seriously, despite repeated orders against delay in compensating the victims' families.
In several states, since the number of claim applications filed for Covid death is less than official deaths, the court said the governments were not taking proactive steps and it may have to take help of State and District Legal Services Authority to reach out to victims' families for disbursement of compensation.
“Not making payment to eligible claimants would tantamount to disobedience of our earlier order,” the bench said.
Hearing a plea filed by Gaurav Bansal, the court sought personal presence of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar chief secretaries. It noted that Andhra Pradesh has recieved 49,292 applications, 31,000 were found eligible and 6,000 were rejected.
The Chief Secretary said if it is found that the rejection has been incorrect, state would reach out all those claimants and give them opportunity to remove defects. He also assured the court that the state shall ensure that not a single claimant who is eligible of compensation shall be deprived of it.
With regard to Bihar, the court noted out of 13,250 deaths recorded, 11,000 claims were recieved. "Compared to other states, applications seem to be on lower side. Looking into the peculiarity of the state, more effort is needed by state of Bihar to reach the eligible persons kin, or family members of the ones who succumbed to Covid-19," the bench said.
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(Published 19 January 2022, 06:34 IST)
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