Gandhinagar : , Tuesday, December 14, 2014 – The Gujarat government announced on Tuesday that Rs.50,000 in relief money has been deposited each by direct benefit transfer (DBT), into bank accounts for around 22,000 people as per Covid deaths of their family members during the pandemic.Rajendra Trivedi, the revenue minister and official spokesperson for the Gujarat government stated that the state had received more than 38,000 Covid-19 applications and has released money to 22,000 people through DBT.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) definition of Covid death, 10,093 requests were submitted for relief.The minister added that the government received more requests after the Supreme Court has changed the definition of Covid death.
Minister whose Department had submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court detailing the claims for compensation, stated that “The state panel here decided not to count death due to heart attack, failure of other organs, or Covid-19, and to treat them separately.”
Vijay Rupani, then chief minister of Gujarat had always maintained that Covid-19 was not being counted as co-morbid according to the ICMR guidelines.
The revenue minister added that, “The Supreme Court ordered that all deaths within 30 days of patients testing positive for Covid-19 should be considered eligible for Rs 50,000 compensation without considering anything else.This has likely caused the numbers to rise, is what I understand primarily.”
Trivedi claimed Gujarat to be the first state in the country to be disbursing Covid death compensation as per the Apex Court’s directive.”We are ahead of all other states in disbursing ex-gratia amount of Rs 50,000 and will ensure that the pandemic victims are paid compensation at the earliest in a simplified manner,” he said.
The Opposition Congress has been claiming that 3 lakh people had succumbed to the dreaded virus and that this was borne out by district-wise death figures since March 2020.
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