Responding to a plea filed in the Supreme Court, the Central government said families of covid victims cannot be compensated with Rs 4 lakh as the disease doesn’t come under natural disasters. The statement came in the form of a 183-page affidavit sent last night to the top court.
Accepting the compensation plea for covid while dismissing the same for other diseases would be “unfair”, the government added.
Giving Rs 4 lakh to every covid victim of the already 3.85 lakh fatality figure, which will possibly scale up, will bring states under the bus with financial problems, it said, adding that hence, it cannot afford to give money to all of them.
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The affidavit was submitted following Supreme Court’s direction to publicize the government’s policy over covid compensation and death certificates after a petition was filed in the court to compensate covid victims’ kin with Rs 4 lakh.
The government rejected the plea saying that according to the Disaster Management Law, compensation will be provided only in events of natural disasters- earthquakes and floods, for example. The huge figure of the covid deaths makes it impossible to include the disease under the provision, it said.
States cannot pay for the lakhs of covid victims also due to the increased health expenses and low tax revenue generated during this time, the affidavit read, adding, “Utilisation of scarce resources for giving ex-gratia, may have unfortunate consequences of affecting the pandemic response and health expenditure in other aspects and hence cause more damage than good.”
However, opposed to the centre’s claim of states’ difficulty in compensating covid victims, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi have announced their own compensation packages. The former declared to give Rs 1 lakh for covid death while the latter announced Rs 5 lakh for the family of every covid victim who died due to oxygen shortage during the second wave.
Reminding SC of its earlier judgment to stay away from executive policies, the Centre stated that the judiciary cannot make a decision on behalf of the government.
“It is well settled through numerous judgements of the Supreme Court that this is a matter which should be performed by the authority, to whom it has been entrusted and not one where the court will substitute its own judgement for the decision to be taken by the executive,” the government said.
However, “covid death” should be mandatorily written in death certificates of every covid victim, the Centre said, adding that doctors who fail to do so will be penalized.
The matter is due to be heard by the SC tomorrow.
