PUNE/MUMBAI: Authorities have cleared 16,500 ex gratia claims for Covid victims till January 31 as against 27,000 applications received from the three administrative units — Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad municipal corporation limits and the rural belt — of the district.
As many as 19,475 deaths caused by Covid in Pune district have been registered on the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) portal. The approved claims were likely to increase by some percentage, as there could be some applications which were rejected for incorrect upload despite being genuine in nature.
Maharashtra has so far disbursed Rs 50,000 each to 1.07 lakh Covid victim families. It is expecting the total approved claims to touch 1.6 lakh, a 10% increase from 1.42 lakh confirmed deaths reported. The state has so far received 2.22 lakh applications, of which over 50,000 have been rejected.
Of the 27,000 applications received in Pune, 7,000 had been rejected and the remaining 4,000 were expected to be cleared in the next two to three days, a district official said.
“Of the 16,500 applications that have been cleared by the respective authorities, relatives of the nearly 9,000 Covid victims have received ex gratia amount of Rs50,000 each,” an official said. The reasons for rejection of claims would be provided to the 7,000 applicants as specified by the state government.
Maharashra health minister Rajesh Tope had earlier said the state government would speed up the process to disburse the Covid death compensation. The Supreme Court had pulled up some states for not taking proactive steps and told the authorities to reach out to the victims’ families without waiting for them to file claims.
The BMC has approved 17,052 claims for ex gratia for Covid victims as on January 28, almost 3% higher than Mumbai’s official cumulative death toll of 16,581 reported as on that day.
On Monday, additional chief secretary Dr Pradeep Vyas held a meeting with districts to expedite the claims.
“We are expecting a 10% increase in the approved claims as against the deaths reported. The rise in cases, however, cannot be attributed to under-reporting, but due to a liberal policy adopted for compensations,” said a senior official.
The official explained that unlike the requirement of a Covid-positive report for certifying a death, the compensation is being granted liberally.
The official said that even if a person committed suicide within a month of suffering from Covid, the individual is eligible for compensation. Or if a Covid-positive person tests negative and develops lung issues later and dies of that ailment in a month’s time, he/she is granted compensation. “The number of applications are not an indicator of the rise in the final numbers, but there are many small districts that could see higher number of applications being cleared as against the deaths reported,” the official said.
To point out a few instances, Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has received over 12,000 applications against 6,055 deaths recorded, while the Ahmednagar Municipal Corporation (AMC) has received 5,889 applications for 1,636 deaths recorded in the area. Districts like Solapur have seen double the number of claims (11,000) compared to official deaths (5,631); Jalgaon has got 7,746 applications against 2,718 official deaths.
Citing an example, Dr D S Potode, deputy district health officer of Jalgaon, said many who couldn’t get tested, or those with HRCT positive reports but Covid-negative reports may not have been certified as Covid deaths. “But they will all be eligible for compensation,” he said. He said many who came from adjoining districts but died in Jalgaon have applied for compensation in both districts.
In Mumbai, civic officials said the count of approved pleas is likely to go up further, but only marginally. The city has often been credited for a relatively low undercounting factor. Dr Mangala Gomare, BMC’s executive health officer, said that the city had a robust mechanism of reporting and multiple rounds of reconciliation were done to ensure there was no undercounting.
Epidemiologist Dr Chandrakant Lahariya said it was acceptable that the number of actual deaths would be higher than official deaths in any setting. “Even in the best of systems, the WHO estimated that the actual deaths could be 1.5 to 1.6-fold higher. However, social security measures such as granting of ex-gratia should be liberal because people have suffered during the pandemic and testing was not a possibility,” he said.
