The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre whether benefits given under the PM Cares Fund to children orphaned in the COVID pandemic can be extended to other parentless children.
“You have brought out a policy rightly for COVID orphans, now you must extend it to everybody. An orphan is an orphan, irrespective of whether the parents died in a road accident or due to an illness… You are attending to the condition, not to the parentage,” Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud addressed the Union government, represented by Additional Solicitor General Vikramjit Banerjee.
The three-judge Bench was hearing a PIL petition filed by Poulomi Pavini Shukla in 2018 when she was a law student.
