Government of India has informed Supreme Court that the National Disaster Management Authority has fixed an ex-gratia of Rs 50,000 to be paid by the States from the State Disaster Response Fund against the Covid deaths across the nation. Earlier, rejecting the petitioner’s demand for an ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh, the NDMA was asked to determine the quantum within six weeks and that the amount to be paid from the National Disaster Response Fund and the State Disaster Response Fund.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has made it clear that the family members of the Covid death victims will be provided the financial assistance of ₹ 50000 which will also cover the life causalities belonging to the health workers and the frontline workers. But the most important thing in this is that the claimants must have the Covid death certificate of belonging victim member to justify their claim for the furnished amount.
To carry out the process, each state government is subjected to release a form which the family member of the victim have to fill and submit it along with the required documents. The most important document in this will be the Covid death certificate of the victim. The Central Government has also said that the District Disaster Management Authority has to take care of the transparent claims, verification and disbursal of the service while providing a hassle free process to the people.
Along with this, the ex-gratia amount of Rs 50,000 should be credited to the claimant’s account through Aadhaar link within 30 days of submission of the adequate documents.
If the claimants do not have a death certificate, then he will be supposed to present its claim before a committee which will be formed at the district level for this purpose. In which the Additional District Collector, Chief Medical Officer and other dignitaries will be involved who will listen to the requests of the claimants and come to the decision whether the claimant should actually get the death certificate or not.
With the country recording around 4.5 lakh Covid deaths, its financial burden will increase upto Rs 2,250 crore for the states, from which the bulk of amount will be released by the Government of India.
The top 10 states reporting the highest number of Covid deaths are Maharashtra (1.38 lakh), Karnataka (37,000), Tamil Nadu (35,000), Delhi (25,000), UP (23,000), Kerala (22,500), West Bengal (19,000), Punjab ( 16,000), Andhra Pradesh (14,000) and Chhattisgarh (13,500).
