Top court mulls CAG probe into fake Covid-19 ex-gratia claims, seeks details from Centre

The Supreme Court on Monday said that an enquiry by the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) may be necessary to probe the possible misuse of its order to provide ₹50,000 ex-gratia for deaths due to Covid-19.

Learning about fake claims processed by some states, details of which will be provided by Centre before the next date of hearing on March 21, a bench of justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna said, “We never visualized that our order could be misused, It is such a pious work being undertaken. We thought our morality will never go so down that there will be fake claims.”

This was the second time the Court made such remarks over fake claims following revelations made by the Centre last week. Although the Court had asked the Centre to put the details in an application for passing necessary orders, solicitor general (SG) Tushar Mehta appeared on Monday and sought a day’s time to file the affidavit. He also asked the Court to consider putting an outer limit of four weeks on filing of claims and for future deaths, if any, four weeks from the date of death.

The bench said, “Put up the matter on Monday to enable appropriate application by the Union of India on limiting the time period to invite applications for ex-gratia payment and seeking further directions on fake claims being made and granted by some of the states.”

Taking a strict view on fake claims, the judges observed, “We can ask the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) to consider the matter. We never imagined such a situation will arise and if officers of the state are involved, that makes it more serious.”

The Court also clarified that the ex-gratia payment is a one-time payment and on each Covid-19 death, only one family member will be entitled to receive the compensation amount of ₹50,000. This clarification became necessary as the Assam government moved an application asking whether the sum of ex-gratia is to be paid to each orphan, considering that the state has identified six families having more than one child who became orphans.

Advocate Diksha Rai Goswami appearing for the state referred to a January 19 direction passed by the Court which said, “We direct the concerned states to reach out to those children who have lost both their parents/surviving parents and whose particulars are already available/uploaded on the Bal Swaraj Portal so that the amount of compensation can be paid to them.”

Avoiding room for any further confusion, the Court said, “Our earlier order is clear – ex-gratia of ₹50,000 shall be qua each death. If there is more than one child, only one child or family member, as the case may be, shall get ex-gratia payment of ₹50,000.” However, the Court further clarified that where both parents have died, the child/family member will be entitled to compensation qua the deceased father and mother separately.

It was on June 30 last year that the top court directed that those who died due to Covid-19 will be entitled to ex-gratia compensation under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. This order came on two petitions filed in public interest by advocates Gaurav Kumar Bansal and Reepak Kansal. On October 4, the Court quantified the ex-gratia at ₹50,000 payable by state governments through the state disaster response fund.

Later, the Court took up monitoring of the compensation payouts after it noticed that states were trying to defeat its orders through lack of publicity, rejecting applications on technical grounds, and insisting upon documents and formalities for claiming ex-gratia. The Court reiterated that any person approaching authorities with proof of death within 30 days of a positive RT-PCR report or supporting medical/hospital records will be entitled to compensation.

On March 7, the Centre through SG Tushar Mehta informed the Court that certain doctors were prescribing fake medical prescriptions for Covid-19 treatment. The Centre further informed the Court that due to the threshold of RT-PCR report or certificate of Covid-19 treatment by doctors, such misuse was reported from many states.