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A Supreme Court bench of Justice MR Shah and Nagarathna today expressed their displeasure over Maharashtra clearing just 1600 plus claims ex-gratia monetary compensation to families of deceased who succumbed to Covid-19 despite receiving over 85000 applications.

The Court directed the state to approve and pay ex-gratia to all the claimants within a period of 10 days from the date of last hearing.

When the hearing for the matter commenced Justice MR Shah expressed that the judges feel satisfied when they see families of victims of the deadly pandemic being compensated monetarily.

The Court then proceeded to hear the counsel for the state of Uttar Pradesh who submitted that they have received over 25,000 applications and the state has cleared the payment for over 20,000 applicants.

The Court was however not satisfied with the publicity given for the scheme and asked the state to publicise the scheme district-wise in news outlets that are popular in that particular area.

The Court then proceeded to hear the state of Maharashtra, whose counsel submitted that they have received 85,000 applicants and that ex-gratia was paid to 1600 odd people.

The bench while expressing its displeasure over the number of payments, directed the state to consider and clear the payment in 10 days.

The counsel for Gujarat submitted that 97 advertisements were published yesterday and as a result of this, the state had received 40,000 applications.

After hearing the parties, the Court noted that a note had been circulated on behalf of the state of Gujarat and it is reported that they have given wide publicity about the scheme by giving advertisements in all news papers across 36 districts on December 14. 

The Court directed same shall be repeated on December 15 also.  The Court noted that they were satisfied with the contents of the advertisement of the state of Gujarat and directed the other states to follow the same format.

The Court also directed the counsels for states to submit their specimen advertisements to Aishwarya Bhati, ASG by tomorrow so that she can apprise the Court of the same.

The Court further directed the state of Gujarat to clear all the pending claims in a week from today. The matter has now been adjourned for hearing on Friday.

Recently, the Court had said that the Gujarat Government has attempted to overreach its order while appointing a scrutiny Committee for allowing ex-gratia compensation to the families of persons who died of Covid-19.

The state of Gujarat had then filed a fresh affidavit in pursuance of the Court's order and a new simplified scheme was constituted for the process to claim compensation without any hassle, which the top Court bench of Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna had found to be satisfactory and in consonance with its earlier order.

Cause Title : Gaurav Kumar Bansal vs Union of India