Supreme Court: After the Court was approached seeking direction to the Government to provide notified ex-gratia monitory compensation of Rs.4,00,000/- to the families of deceased who succumbed to COVID-19, the bench of Ashok Bhushan and MR Shah, JJ have asked the Union of India to put before it the policies or guidelines regarding issuance of death certificate with regard to patients, who were infected with COVID-19, along with the relevant material regarding the scheme under Section 12(iii) of the Disaster Management Act, 2005.
It was argued before the Court that,
- under the revised list of items and norms of assistance from State disaster response fund which is part of the letter dated 08.04.2015, Rs.4,00,000/- as exgratia compensation is required to be made.
- there is no uniform policy for issuing the certificate or any official document regarding causes of death to the deceased families due to which there is a difficulty on availing various benefits.
The Court will next hear the matter on 11.06.2021.
[Gaurav Kumar Bansal v. Union of India, 2021 SCC OnLine SC 397, order dated 24.05.2021]
For Petitioner(s): Petitioner-in-person, S.B. Upadhyay, Sr. Adv., Reepak Kansal, Adv., Yadunandan Bansal, Adv., Nishant Kumar, Adv., Prince Arora, Adv., Shahnaz Rahman, Adv., Harisha S.R., AOR
For Respondent(s): Aishwarya Bhati, ASG, Rajat Nair, Adv., Amit Sharma, Adv., B.V. Balram Das, AOR, Chirag M. Shroff, AOR