The Supreme Court of India on Friday directed the State authorities to identify children who have become orphans due to the COVID-19 pandemic and directed them to provide immediate relief to them.
The apex court directed the district administrations across the country to immediately take care of the basic needs of children orphaned after having lost one or both parents to COVID-19.
A vacation bench of Justices LN Rao and Aniruddha Bose also asked the district administrations to identify orphaned children and upload their data on the NCPCR website by Saturday evening.
The bench said state governments must inform it of the position of these children and the steps they have taken to provide them immediate relief.
“We have read somewhere that in Maharashtra over 2,900 children have lost their one or both parents due to COVID-19. We don’t have an exact number of such children. We cannot even imagine how many such children in this large country have got orphaned due to this devastating pandemic,” the bench said.
The top court noted that the Centre has already issued an advisory to the concerned authorities for the protection of children, who have lost their parents due to COVID-19.
On Thursday, the Kerala government announced a special package for children orphaned by COVID-19 in the state. Under the package, initially, an amount of Rs 3 lakhs will be given to the children as a lump sum. In addition, an amount of Rs 2,000 per month will also be given till they reach the age of 18.