The Supreme Court on Thursday directed a “random scrutiny” of Covid-19 death compensation claims in four states and warned those filing false claims with up to two years in jail.

Earlier, the government had told the court that 7.38 lakh claims for the Rs 50,000 ex gratia had been filed in the country against an official Covid death toll of 5.16 lakh.

Several studies by public health experts in India and abroad this year have, however, estimated that India’s actual Covid death toll is over 30 lakh.

The apex court asked the Union health ministry to conduct random sample surveys of 5 per cent of the Covid death compensation claims received in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Kerala “in the first instance”.

These four states have received the highest number of claim applications. The exercise — a pilot study — is to be completed within three months and the report presented before the court.

The court also set deadlines for filing the claims, giving families that had lost members to Covid before March 20 this year “60 days from today” to do so, and all others 90 days “from the date of death due to Covid”. It said that in special cases, the deadline may be extended by district authorities.

The bench of Justices M.R. Shah and B. Nagarathna asked the four states “to assist in carrying out the scrutiny… and submit all the necessary particulars of the respective claims”.

It added: “If it is found that anybody has made a fake claim, the same shall be considered under Section 52 of the (National Disaster Management) Act, 2005, and liable to be punished accordingly.”

The section mandates a maximum punishment of two years in jail.

The apex court had on June 30 last year directed that each family that had lost a member to Covid be paid Rs 50,000 as ex gratia. This is over and above any other compensation the family might be entitled to under insurance laws and other statutory provisions.

The Centre — supported by Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala — had sought a random scrutiny of the claims saying their number had risen to 738,610, far above the country’s official death toll that on Wednesday stood at 516,605.

Claim deadline

The court declined a plea from solicitor-general Tushar Mehta to fix an upper limit of four weeks for entertaining claims for Covid-19 death compensation.

It agreed that without a deadline “the process of receiving the claims would (be) endless and, in that case, there is all possibility of submitting false claims”.

“However, at the same time, four weeks’ time… is too short. The family would need some reasonable time to recover from the death and sorrow and file the claim,” Justice Shah said.

“Therefore, we deem it appropriate to fix the outer limit of 60 days from today to file the claims for compensation in case the death occurred due to Covid-19 prior to 20.03.2022.

“For future deaths, 90 days’ time is provided from the date of death due to Covid-19…. The earlier order to process the claims and to make the actual payment of compensation within a period of 30 days from the date of receipt of claim is ordered to be continued.”

However, the court said, if “in case of extreme hardship any claimant could not make an application within the time prescribed”, they could approach “the grievance redressal committee (district level)”, which would consider such applications “case to case”.

The court directed the Union health and home ministries and all the states “to give wide publicity to the present order through print and electronic media so that the claimants can know the time limit fixed by this court for making claims”.

“Such advertisement shall be published fortnightly for a period of six weeks from today,” the court said.