PIL hearing on govt servants who died during Damoh poll

PIL hearing on govt servants who died during Damoh poll

Bhopal:19.11.2021

The counsel for the state government told a division bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court during hearing of a PIL charging that more than 100 government servants died due to Covid-19 during election duty in the Damoh bypoll that the list of deceased persons submitted in the court has not been provided to the government.

Following this, the bench of Chief Justice R V Malimath and Justice V K Shukla ordered that a copy of the list be provided to the government counsel as well, while deferring hearing of the case to November 23.

The petitioner Jaya Thakur claimed that more than 100 government servants on election duty died of coronavirus during election duty in the bypoll to Damoh assembly seat and 66 of them were teachers. The district education officer has confirmed the death of 66 teachers, who were on election duty, due to Covid infection. No compensation has been paid to dependents of these employees despite the Election Commission notification saying that a compensation of Rs30 lakh would be given to dependents of a government servant, who dies of Covid infection while performing election duty.

The court had asked the petitioner to present a list of employees who died of Covid infection during the election.

In the previous hearing of the case, the petitioner had submitted a list of 65 teachers who died due to Covid during election duty in Damoh before the court.

The counsel for the state government on Thursday told the court that the list has not been provided to the state government, following which the court directed to provide a copy of the list to the government counsel. Advocate Varun Thakur appeared in the case on behalf of the petitioner. TNN