NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Centre to conduct an inquiry into fake ex-gratia claims on the death of kin due to Covid-19 while observing that nobody can be permitted to avail the compensation by making a false claim or submitting the false certificate.
A bench of Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna said that this Court had passed the order for payment of ex-gratia amount keeping in mind the "humanity and sufferings" of the family members who lost their kins due to Covid-19.
The apex court said "nobody can be permitted to misuse" the compensation and it is also against "morality and is unethical", which can never be accepted.
Therefore, it directed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to carry out random scrutiny of the 5 per cent of the claim applications filed in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and Maharashtra.
The top court directed state governments to assist the Centre in carrying out the scrutiny of the claim applications and submit all the necessary particulars of the respective claims that have been attended to or processed to the Health Ministry.
"The Ministry and NDMA shall carry out the scrutiny within a period of three months from today and submit the report before this Court. If it is found that anybody has made a fake claim, the same shall be considered under Section 52 (Punishment for false claim) of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and liable to be punished accordingly," the...
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