COVID Death Compensation : Supreme Court Reserves Order On Centre's Application For Time-Limit For Making Claims & Measures To Check Fake Claims

The Supreme Court. on Monday reserved orders in the application filed by the Central Government seeking a time-limit for submitting claims for COVID death compensation and also seeking measures to monitor fake claims.

A bench comprising Justice MR Shah and BV Nagarathna said that the order can be expected on day after tomorrow. The bench indicated that it will set a time-limit for 60 days from now for past deaths and 90 days for future deaths.

As regards the issue of fake claims, the bench indicated that it might ask the National Disaster Management Authority to conduct a random survey of 5% of the claims in n four states which had a wide difference between number of claims and recorded deaths - Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Kerala.

Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, suggested the fixing of time limit as 4 weeks from today. However, the bench opined that it might be too short a time-period.

"If there is a death, then the family would need time to recover from the sorrow and then file claims", Justice Shah remarked. The Centre had filed the application stating that without any time-limit, the claim process can become "never-ending".

With respect to the issue of fake claims, Senior Advocate R Basant, appearing for the State of Kerala, suggested that the matter should not be entrusted to the State Police. He suggested that the District Legal Services Authority could be asked to do a random verification of the claims.

The Solicitor General informed the bench that Section 52 of the National Disaster Management Act gives statutory power to punish persons making false claims. 

The Bench said that it will consider these aspects and pass an order day after tomorrow. Last week, the Bench had expressed shock at people misusing the process to make fake claims.

"We never imagined that this can be misused also. This is a very pious work and we thought that our morality has not gone so down that in this also there will be some fake claims…If some officers are involved that it is very serious", Justice Shah had observed.

The Bench was considering the case Gaurav Kumar Bansal versus Union of India, a Public Interest Litigation in which it had earlier approved the ex-gratia amount of Rs.50,000 fixed by the NDMA as compensation to the family members of persons who died due to COVID.

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