The Allahabad High Court has set aside the order of the District Magistrate, Etawah, which had denied ex-gratia compensation of ₹30 lakh to the wife of Lecturer Kaushal Kishore, who died after contracting COVID-19 while performing duty during the 2021 three-tier Panchayat elections. The Court held that the authority had arbitrarily rejected the claim by ignoring available medical records.
Highlighting the insensitive approach of the concerned officials, the Court observed:
“…..in our considered view, respondent concerned was not justified in rejecting the claim of the petitioner for compensation only on the basis of the statements of two doctors without verifying the facts from the lab and the hospital having ID details and the patient details already on record of those two documents in question.”
The order was passed by a Division Bench of Justice Ajit Kumar and Justice Swaroopama Chaturvedi, while allowing the writ petition filed by Smt. Raj Kumari.
The Court noted that neither the lab nor the hospital had termed the report as forged, the report contained details such as the Clinical ID and Emergency Token, which were not disputed by the respondents. In such circumstances, treating the report as fabricated was a result of administrative non-inquiry and clear error in arriving at conclusions.
The Court further emphasized that the documents on record clearly established the COVID infection of the deceased. It specifically noted:
“the document……… in the writ petition is a slip generated by the UP Covid Lab of the hospital in the name of ‘UP Covid Lab Results’ asking for repeat sampling…….. Antigen advice for repeat sampling since was a computer generated slip of UP Covid Lab concerned, it might not have been required to be signed by any doctor and therefore, merely because it was not signed by any doctor it would not become a forged document.”
According to the case, Kaushal Kishore, a Lecturer at Janta Inter College, Bakewar, Etawah, was deployed on election duty on 19 April 2021. Soon after completing duty, he developed symptoms of COVID-19, including high fever and breathing difficulty. On 27 April 2021, his first sample was taken at the government hospital, where the report advised re-sampling indicating that the report was not negative. Subsequently, the UP Covid Lab report issued on 29 April 2021 by Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar Joint Hospital (Male), Etawah, showed “Covid Antigen Positive.”
As his condition deteriorated, he was being shifted to Saifai Medical College, where he died en route on 1 May 2021 within 12 days of election duty. As per the Government Order dated 1 June 2021, ex-gratia of ₹30 lakh was payable if death ensued within one month due to COVID-19.
In spite of this, the District Magistrate denied the claim on 2 July 2022, stating that no antigen/RT-PCR positive report of the deceased was available. The Court found this reasoning factually incorrect and irrational. Rejecting reports merely because they did not contain a doctor’s signature was also held unjustified, since during the pandemic it was neither mandatory that all such slips carry signatures nor had the hospital declared the documents forged. The Court observed that the administration neither verified the documents with the lab nor examined the details recorded therein. The rejection of the claim was therefore based on absence of factual inquiry and could not be sustained in law.
The Court concluded that the deceased fulfilled all conditions prescribed under the Government Order. Accordingly, the impugned order was quashed, and the District Magistrate, Etawah, was directed to reconsider the petitioner’s claim for compensation and take an appropriate decision within one month.
Case: Smt. Raj Kumari vs State Of U.P. And 3 Others
