NEW DELHI: Referring to the
recent deaths of two judicial officers of the
subordinate judiciary, a public interest litigation (PIL) has urged
Delhi high court to declare them
frontline workers and pay
Rs 1 crore to their families
ex gratia.
The PIL, filed by advocate Tanvir Ahmed Mir, also sought a direction for collating details of all those staffers of the subordinate judiciary and Delhi high court who might have died due to Covid-19 while performing their duty and payment of an ex gratia not less than Rs 50 lakh to their kin.
“The petitioner and his associate lawyers are deeply anguished at the fact of a number of judicial officers, court staff members and officials of the registry, along with their family members, most unfortunately losing their lives due to the current pandemic of Covid-19, especially in its second wave post March 2021,” the PIL stated.
It further argued that a considerable number of officers were undergoing a “harrowing experience” of not being able to meet the expenses of the medical treatment. “Also a number of officers and their immediate relatives most unfortunately have lost their lives as well,” the petition added.
The PIL further stated that the right from April 2020, the subordinate judiciary and court staff had risked their lives for the livelihood of their family members and gone to court premises, “organised the filings and achieved the target of complete coordination between the general public at large, the lawyers community as well as the judicial community”.
It added, “A number of court staff members as well as judicial officers got infected but nevertheless attended the court hearings, facilitating the same for the benefit of the general public at large.”
Therefore, the petition, among other things, urged the high court to hold that
K Venugopal, family court judge, Saket district courts, and Kamran Khan, metropolitan magistrate, Dwarka district courts lost their lives in the line of duty as frontline warriors.