False compensation claims for COVID-19 deaths unethical; Supreme Court allows Central govt to scrutinise 5% claims in 4 States

The Supreme Court on Thursday held that filing of false claims for ex-gratia compensation for COVID-19 deaths is a punishable offence under Section 52 of the Disaster Management Act besides being against morality and ethics [Gaurav Kumar Bansal v. Union of India]..A Bench of Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna, therefore, allowed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to conduct random scrutiny of 5 per cent of the COVID-claim applications filed in the States of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and Maharashtra.“Nobody can be permitted to misuse the same and it is also against morality and is unethical, which can never be accepted,” the Court said.States were thus directed to assist the Union in carrying out the scrutiny of applications to identify any fake claims seeking compensation for COVID-19 deaths..The Court was hearing an interlocutory application filed by the Central government seeking modification of an earlier order to permit a sample scrutiny to verify the claim documents processed by State governments for grant of the said compensation.Solicitor General Tushar Mehta representing the Central government, sought modification of the order to the extent of declaring the time limit of four weeks as as outer limit for the existing eligible claimants to lodge their claims with the authorities, and four weeks for claimants who might become eligible in the future. .Approximately 7,38,610 claims have been received for ex-gratia compensation and it may be difficult to verify each and every claim, the bench observed. .On the outer limit for claiming ex gratia compensation, the apex court held that, “if there is no outer time limit fixed, then the process of receiving the claims would go endless and, in that case, there is all possibility of submitting false claims.” The Court, however, said that fixing four weeks time to claim compensation would be insufficient as families of COVID victims would need some reasonable time to recover from the death and sorrow and filing the claim.The Court, therefore, fixed 60 days as the outer limit for filing compensation claims for COVID-19 deaths."Therefore, we deem it appropriate to fix the outer limit of sixty 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, ninety days’ time is provided from the date of death due to COVID-19 to file the claim for compensation,” the Court ordered.To make an exception for those who face extreme hardship for filing their claims within the stipulated time, the Court said it would open for the claimant to approach the Grievance Redressal Committee and make the claim through them to be considered on a case-to-case basis. Any claimant, being a kin/family member of those who died due to COVID-19, is entitled to the ex-gratia of ₹50,000. Directions were issued to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Central government and all the concerned States to give wide publicity to the order through print and electronic media so that the claimants can know the time limit fixed by the Court for making claims. “Such advertisement shall be published fortnightly for a period of six weeks from today," the Court said. Senior Advocate R Basant appeared for the State of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.Advocate Rahul Chitnis appeared for the State of Maharashtra..[Read Order]