KASARGOD: The Supreme Court came down hard on the government of Kerala for sleeping on a 2017 order that asked it to pay Rs 5 lakh each to all the endosulfan survivors in Kasaragod.
Hearing a contempt petition filed by eight survivors, a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant said the compensation should reach the endosulfan survivors and not be in the government's books.
"You (The government) have set aside Rs 200 crore. That does not serve the purpose. It has to reach the survivor," the court said, according to PS Sudheer, the counsel for the petitioners.
The state government gave Rs 5 lakh each to the eight survivors and urged the Supreme Court to close the contempt petition, which irked the court.
The apex court told the government to pay Rs 50000 each to all the eight survivors as legal cost for forcing them to come to the Supreme Court, said Sudheer.
The court said the state government woke up only after the survivors filed a contempt petition in the Supreme Court. In 2019, too, the state government paid Rs 5 lakh each to four endosulfan survivors who filed a contempt petition in the Supreme Court.
On April 8, 2022, while hearing the contempt petition filed by eight survivors, the government sought four weeks to comply with the 2017 order. But the government paid the compensation only to those who filed the contempt petition and sought to close the case.
"Are you a welfare state? If you are, you will have to pay all the money to the survivors," the court told the state government on Friday.
The Supreme Court also asked the chief secretary VP Joy to file an affidavit on what the state government did to ensure lifelong treatment to the endosulfan survivors. That was another aspect of the Supreme Court's 2017 order.
Ignoring the government's request to close the case, the Supreme Court scheduled the next hearing for the third week of July and asked the chief secretary to convene a meeting every month to review the progress of paying compensation to all the endosulfan-affected persons.
The government told the court that it would be giving compensation to "all the victims" only after a team of Health and Revenue officials visit the houses of the survivors and "verify their eligibility in accordance with the present criteria for identification of endosulfan victims".
Activists working for endosulfan survivors said the government had already identified the survivors through special medical camps and social surveys and another verification was just to deny compensation to some survivors.
To be sure, the government had identified 6,727 persons as endosulfan victims.
Of them, the government has not yet given compensation to 3,706 persons or around 55% of the victims.
In her report, the Kasaragod collector said another Rs 217.06 crore was needed to fully compensate the survivors. But the government has allocated only Rs 200 crore to compensate the survivors.