E-Paper
Lack of RT-PCR report no ground to deny ₹50 lakh Covid relief: HC
The petitioner’s husband was a junior engineer at the Obra Thermal Power Project of the Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited. He remained on duty through the pandemic and was admitted to the Super Speciality Covid Hospital at Lodhi in Sonbhadra on April 28, 2021.
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The Allahabad high court has held that a claim for ex-gratia assistance of ₹50 lakh under the government’s Covid-19 scheme cannot be rejected merely for want of a positive RT-PCR report when the government hospital’s own records show a positive antigen test result and the authorities themselves accept the infection and the cause of death.
A bench of Justices Prakash Padia and Garima Prashad, while allowing a petition filed by one Archana Singh, observed, “Where the Government hospital’s contemporaneous records expressly record a positive antigen result and the respondents accept the infection and cause of death, the absence of a separate copy of the test report cannot be treated as absence of proof of Covid-19.”
The petitioner’s husband was a junior engineer at the Obra Thermal Power Project of the Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited. He remained on duty through the pandemic and was admitted to the Super Speciality Covid Hospital at Lodhi in Sonbhadra on April 28, 2021.
His bed-head ticket recorded a positive antigen test result. He died during treatment on May 5, 2021, with the hospital’s death proforma recording Covid-19 viral pneumonia followed by cardiopulmonary arrest.
On the recommendation of the chief general manager and based on a report by a committee headed by the chief development officer, the district magistrate approved the claim in June 2021. The certificates were subsequently verified as correct. However, the application was rejected on November 16, 2021, with the table accompanying the order recording that all required documents were available except the positive RT-PCR report.
The standing counsel for the state submitted that the government order required the report to be uploaded and that, in its absence, the claim could not be processed through the portal.
The court observed, “In this case, the hospital’s own death proforma expressly records Covid-19 viral pneumonia. Cardiopulmonary arrest is recorded as the event that followed it. That entry provides no basis for disregarding Covid-19 as the underlying cause of death.”
In its order dated October 26, the court noted that the government order itself recognised an RT-PCR report, an antigen test result or a CT scan report as acceptable evidence of infection. An RT-PCR report, therefore, was not the only recognised means of establishing Covid-19 infection.
The court held that this requirement had to be read in conjunction with the Covid-19 death certificate form forming part of the scheme, which allows the certifying medical authority to record another source of confirmation when testing was not conducted using the specified methods.
The government scheme provides a one-time payment of ₹50 lakh to the dependants of personnel who died of Covid-19 while performing duties connected with its prevention, protection or treatment.
A government order dated July 26, 2021, required a legible copy of the deceased employee’s RT-PCR, antigen or CT scan report to be uploaded on the relief commissioner’s portal.
