Top court acts tough over Covid-19 ex-gratia

A beneficiary is given a dose of needle-free ZyCoV-D vaccine in Patna on Friday. Pic/PTI

The Supreme Court Friday directed all states governments and Union Territories to appoint dedicated nodal officer to coordinate with the member secretary of the state legal service authority (SLSA) to facilitate payment of ex gratia compensation to family members of COVID-19 victims.

A bench comprising Justices M R Shah and B V Nagarathna also directed the state governments to give full particulars like name, address and death certificate to the concerned SLSA, as also complete details with respect to orphans, within one week from today (Friday) failing which the matter shall be viewed very seriously.

The top court reiterated that applications seeking compensation should not be rejected on technical grounds and if any technical glitch is found, the states concerned should give them opportunity to cure defects as the ultimate goal of the welfare state is to provide some solace and compensation to victims.

States should make all endeavours to pay the compensation to the victims within a maximum period of 10 days from the receipt of the claim, it said.

"Despite our earlier order directing all the state governments to give full particulars of the deaths due to Covid-19 registered with their portal and the number of persons to whom the ex gratia payment is made, it appears that most of the states have given only statistics and no full particulars are given.

4,19,52,712 Total no. of Coronavirus cases in india so far
5,00,055 Total no. of deaths due to the virus in India so far
14,35,569 Total no. of active cases in India

India 3rd country to record 5L deaths

India crossed the grim milestone of 5 lakh COVID deaths on Thursday, becoming the third country to do so after the US and Brazil. The country took 217 days to reach 5 lakh deaths from 4 lakh recorded on July 1 last year. The toll had crossed 3 lakh on May 23 and 2 lakh on April 27. With over 9.2 lakh deaths, US has the most fatalities followed by Brazil with over 6.3 lakh.

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