The Delhi High Court has refused a petition seeking an order to give Rs 1 crore to the kin of those who lost their lives within a month of immediate death or recovery from COVID-19, saying that it will lead to the country becoming insolvent. A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla remarked, “The whole country will go bankrupt.” We cannot give such an order.
The bench said in its order that there is a policy to give ex-gratia amount to the next of kin of the victims, which has also been approved by the Supreme Court. According to the policy, the National Disaster Management Authority has fixed an ex-gratia amount of Rs 50,000 for deaths due to COVID-19, which the states will give from their State Disaster Response Fund.
The court made this observation on the writ petition of Dr. Vidyotma Jha in June last year. In this, the policy of giving ex-gratia amount to the victims of the epidemic was demanded. The petitioner had alleged that the authorities were giving compensation to the families of selected persons only on the basis of pick and choice without any guidelines.
It was requested in the petition that directions be issued to the respondents to frame appropriate policy and guidelines for providing ex-gratia amount to all the families without any discrimination. However, the court said that a policy is already in place, so there is no need to do anything further on it.
The total number of cases of corona virus infection in India has increased to 4,30,30,925 and so far 5,21,487 people have lost their lives due to this epidemic. More than 49.36 million cases of infection have been reported in the world and more than 61.58 lakh people have died.
The daily rate of infection is 0.23 percent and the weekly rate is 0.22 percent. So far, a total of 4,24,97,567 people have become infection free in the country and the death rate from COVID-19 is 1.21 percent. At the same time, more than 185.04 crore doses of anti-Covid-19 vaccines have been administered so far under the nationwide vaccination campaign.