Mumbai : The Allahabad High Court has refused to entertain a plea which wanted it to direct Uttar Pradesh government to enact a legislation to compensate people who suffer any loss/injury due to side effects of the Covid-19 vaccination.
While noting that a direction cannot be given to legislate a law, the bench of Justice Sanjay Yadav and Justice Jayant Banerji recently dismissed the public interest litigation filed by Gajendra Singh Yadav, a law student seeking direction to the state government to have provisions to compensate Covid-19 vaccinated individuals in line with the United States of America having National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act 1986 and other countries having similar enactment to ensure compensation to person who suffer any loss/ njury due to side effect of any vaccine.
The petitioner stated that presently mass drive is carried out to vaccinate one and all and with large scale vaccination the life and personal liberty of individuals will be at peril. To protect the life and personal liberty of individuals he sought command to the state government to have statutory provisions to compensate the individuals in case of loss/sufferings.
The Court cited the Supreme Court’s rulings in the cases of Bal Ram Bali & Anr. v. Union of India AIR 2007 SC 3074, V.K. Naswa v. Union of India (2012) 2 SCC 542 and Manoj Narula v. Union of India (2014) 9 SCC 1 to drive home the point that neither the Court can legislate, nor it has any competence to issue directions to the legislature to enact the law in a particular manner.
The court concluded that no direction can be issued for enacting any legislation in any particular manner by High Courts under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.
In a related matter, the Supreme Court has recently refused to entertain a plea seeking direction to the Centre for framing “strict” guidelines to prevent any chance of sale of fake coronavirus vaccines in the country.
A bench comprising Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian said that though it understood the “motivation” behind filing of the PIL, it cannot pass general directions.
The plea stated that the Interpol official also issued a global alert to law enforcement agencies of 194 member countries warning them to prepare for organized crime networks targeting Covid-19 vaccines, both physically and online.
