SC says families of doctors who died on Covid duty are entitled to PMGKY insurance cover

New Delhi: The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the families of doctors who died while performing their duties during the Covid-19 pandemic are entitled to insurance coverage of Rs 50 lakh under the 'Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana' (PMGKY).

A bench comprising Justices PS Narasimha and R Mahadevan set aside a previous Bombay High Court judgment which had stated that private practitioners were not entitled to coverage under the government’s insurance scheme. The High Court had ruled in March 2021 that private hospital staff were ineligible to receive benefits unless their services had been explicitly requisitioned by the state or central government.

The apex court observed that the invocation of disaster management laws and regulations was intended to "leave no stone unturned" in requisitioning doctors. The bench stated that the insurance scheme was equally intended to assure health professionals on the frontline that the country supported them.

" There is a requisition of the services of doctors and this is evident from the conjoint reading of the provisions of the Act, the Maharashtra Prevention and Containment of COVID-19 Regulations 2020, the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation Order dated March 31, 2020, the PMGKY-Package Scheme, the explanatory communication to the PMGKY policy and the FAQs released," the bench noted.

While expanding the eligibility, the court clarified that individual insurance claims under the PMGKY package will still be decided in accordance with the law. The bench specified that the burden of proof remains on the family.

"The onus to prove that a deceased lost his life while performing a Covid-19-related duty is on the claimant and the same needs to be established on the basis of credible evidence," the court stated.

The ruling came during a hearing of a plea moved by Pradeep Arora and others against the Bombay High Court order. The legal battle originated from a case filed by Kiran Bhaskar Surgade, whose husband ran a private clinic in Thane and succumbed to the virus in 2020. Her insurance claim had been rejected on the grounds that her husband’s clinic was not a designated Covid-19 hospital.

The PMGKY package was launched in March 2020 to provide a safety net for health workers, ensuring financial security for their dependents should they lose their lives to the infection.

(Inputs from PTI)