The Supreme Court has held that private doctors who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic and died of the infection are eligible for compensation under the Central government’s insurance scheme for pandemic-era health workers, even if they were not formally requisitioned by the government. The Court set aside a previous judgment of the Bombay High Court which had denied such eligibility to private practitioners on the ground that they had not been officially drafted for COVID duty.
The case arose when the widow of a doctor — a private practitioner who died in June 2020 from COVID-19 — claimed the compensation amount promised by the insurance scheme. That claim had been rejected on the basis that the doctor was running a private clinic and had not been requisitioned by the municipal corporation. The High Court had upheld the rejection, limiting the benefit only to those whose services were officially requisitioned or drafted for COVID response.
In its latest verdict, a bench comprising Justices P. S. Narasimha and R. Mahadevan observed that many private medical professionals continued to provide medical services during the pandemic — often at personal risk. The Court emphasised that these individuals, having kept their clinics or hospitals open, contributed meaningfully to handling patients during crisis. The bench said that even if a doctor was not formally on record as “on COVID duty,” that should not exclude their family from insurance cover if the doctor had offered medical services during the pandemic and died from COVID.
The Court clarified that it would not decide individual claims immediately, but would lay down broad principles for claim evaluation. According to those principles, the eligibility for compensation under the scheme depends on two essential conditions: first, the doctor must have actively offered medical services during the relevant period (for instance, by keeping the clinic or hospital operational) and second, the cause of death must be COVID-19 infection. Once these criteria are satisfied with credible evidence, the claim should be honoured, regardless of whether the practitioner was formally requisitioned by the government.
The bench underscored that assuming private doctors were working purely for profit and not as frontline responders was incorrect. The Court urged the government to ensure insurance companies honour all valid claims made under the insurance scheme. It stressed that society owes a debt of gratitude to all doctors — public or private — who risked their lives during the pandemic. The Court’s remarks reflected a recognition of the sacrifices made by private health-care professionals and reiterated that the central scheme’s protective umbrella should extend to all who served, without discriminatory exclusions.
This judgment marks a significant expansion of entitlement under the insurance scheme: it removes the earlier categorical exclusion of private practitioners not formally drafted for COVID-19 duty, and instead adopts a principle-based approach focused on actual involvement in care and cause of death. As a result, families of many more health-care providers who died treating patients during the pandemic could now become eligible for the ₹50-lakh compensation under the insurance scheme.
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