Supreme Court reserves order on extending time limit for claiming COVID-19 death compensation

Reserving its order on Monday on the Centre's plea for a sample scrutiny of the Covid death compensation applications to identify fake documents, the Supreme Court said it may give 60 days for filing the claims of the families in case of the persons already dead and 90 days in case of the future deaths.

A bench comprising Justices MR Shah and BV Nag hinted that it may ask the national disaster management authority (NCMA) to conduct random scrutiny of 5% Covid death claim applications from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Kerala which recorded more claims than the official death figures.

At the outset, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted that the Centre and the state governments be allowed to conduct the sample survey as it is not possible to examine every case. He wanted the court to fix the outer limit for filing the Covid death claims and suggested four-week time limit from Monday.

Petitioner advocate Gaurav Bansal submitted that the outer limit be of 90 days as families need some time to come over the loss of life. He said there are already provisions in the NDMA to address the issues with fake Covid claims.

Justice Shah agreed that if there is a death, the family would need time to recover and then file the claims, refusing to agree with the Centre's plea that the claim process will become “never-ending” if no time limit is fixed.