New Delhi: Appreciating the role of healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court Thursday said the “courage and sacrifice of our doctors remain indelible”. The divisional bench of Justice P.S. Narasimha and R. Mahadevan was hearing the matter of a doctor who was ‘requisitioned’ during the pandemic.
The case centred around the interpretation of the word “requisitioned” under the scope of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKY), an insurance scheme granting insurance up to Rs 50 lakh for healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
B.S. Surgade was a private medical practitioner who was compelled to keep his clinic open during the national lockdown under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897. During the course of his work, he was diagnosed with the coronavirus infection, and died a few days later.
His widow applied for the insurance claim, but her plea was rejected by the Bombay High Court on the grounds that there was no official record of Surgade providing services explicitly as requisitioned. It was observed in the high court that the deceased engaged in private practice, his clinic was not a designated COVID-19 facility, and his services had not been officially requisitioned by the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC).
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What Supreme Court said
When the matter reached the apex court, it acknowledged that during the pandemic, doctors and health professionals were often “requisitioned” using special laws and regulations. However, the court restricted its task to establishing how this required “requisitioning” of service could be reasonably inferred.
“In this view of the matter, we have no hesitation in holding that there was a ‘requisition’ of doctors and other medical professionals. We are not inclined to accept the rather simplistic submission that there was no specific requisition and therefore the claim for insurance must fail on this ground alone,” the bench noted in the judgment.
The Supreme Court rejected the restrictive interpretation of the high court and noted that, given the emergency, when the Epidemic Diseases Act was in place, it would have been highly impractical to give a formal letter of appointment or requisition for every single doctor.
The divisional bench further said: “The country has not forgotten the situation that prevailed at the onset of COVID-19, when every citizen contributed in some measure, despite fear of infection or imminent death.”
The judges held that when looking at the Act, the Maharashtra Regulations, the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation Order, and the PMGKY-Package together, it was clear that there was a legal “requisition” of services for doctors.
The court stressed that the purpose of invoking these laws and introducing the insurance scheme simultaneously was to assure frontline professionals that the country supported them. However, individual insurance claims must still be evaluated based on actual evidence, meaning the claimant still has the responsibility to prove that the deceased lost their life specifically while performing a COVID-19-related duty.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)