Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Union Government which is facing severe criticism over the way it is handling the Covid crisis, had earlier said that compensation for the Covid victims cannot be provided.
Hearing Public interest litigation (PIL), the Supreme Court slammed the Centre and directed the government to pay compensation for the victims and gave six weeks time to prepare the guidelines on paying the compensation.
Citing the Disaster Management Act, 2005, the Supreme Court told the Centre that unlike what it said, it is mandatory to provide ex-gratia for the victims, who lost their lives to the Covid pandemic.
The country’s top court which said, the Covid victims should be given the ex-gratia said that it cannot fix the amount which should be given to the victims and left the option to fix the ex-gratia amount to the centre.
Saying that suggesting the amount for the ex-gratia falls under the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) duties and said, the body had failed in its duty in the ex-gratia regard.
It has to be noted that, earlier the Union Government told the court that compensation cannot be handover to the Covid victims as the financial state of the respective states and Centre were severely affected by the crisis.
