As a special measure for flood victims in Uttarakhand, Life Insurance Corporation of India will waive the normal condition of seven-year waiting period for settlement of claims in case of missing persons.
LIC chairman Thomas Mathew said the company may also relax the norms for death certificate as it may not be easy to obtain one currently. Under existing norms, a death certificate is issued after a gap of seven years in case of missing persons.
In an interview, Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna has said that tehsildars will issue death certificates after a month. “If a person doesn’t return in 30 days, the government will immediately release the compensation and not go by rules which state that you have to wait for seven years,” he had told TOI recently.
A senior LIC officer told TOI that the exact details of the claim settlement process would be finalized with 72 hours and may include victims of the flash floods in Himachal Pradesh as well. Private life insurers were, however, silent on the claim settlement process that they would adopt.
The statement from LIC came after finance minister P Chidambaram asked the public sector company to do away with the normal conditions for claim settlement and constitute a special team as well as a camp office in Dehradun to settle claims of flood victims.
“LIC should follow the same norms for settlement of claims as being followed by it during the tsunami or earthquake in Bhuj and Latur in the past,” Chidambaram told senior LIC officials. He suggested that LIC could take an indemnity bond from the claimants and the claims may be settled on priority.
“The calamity that has happened in Uttarakhand. LIC has already issued instructions to all its offices in that area to expeditiously settle the claims and attend to the policyholders. We have earlier instances (like in)… tsunami and Bhuj earthquake where we settled claims expeditiously,” he added.
Mathew did not give any figures about the quantum of claims but said it would be “huge”.
