New Delhi: Revising its earlier data, the Women and Child Development Ministry on Friday said that 1,82,671 children had lost at least one parent in the Covid pandemic. The ministry, in response to a question in the Lok Sabha to Congress MP Adoor Prakash and TDP’s Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy, said that with 34,160 such cases Odisha accounted for the highest numbers.
The ministry also revised the data of applicants of the PM Cares scheme which was initiated by the Prime Minister to support children who have lost parents to the Covid pandemic through health insurance, education and financial assistance till 23 years of age. The ministry, in its reply, said that till now 4,532 children benefited from the PM Cares scheme.
Previously, in 2022, the government had said that 1,53,847 children have lost either or both parents, including 1,42,949 children with single parents, 492 abandoned children and 10,386 children who have lost both their parents. The government had then said that 4,196 children had been approved for the benefits of the PM Cares scheme.
In her reply to the unstarred question on Friday, the Union Minister for Women and Child Development Annapurna Devi said that with 27,302 children, Maharashtra accounted for the second highest number of cases, followed by Uttar Pradesh with 19,437 such cases.
Among the beneficiaries of PM Cares, however, Maharashtra accounted for the highest with 855 cases, followed by Uttar Pradesh (467) and Madhya Pradesh (433). Odisha accounted for only 112 cases.
In terms of financial support, the minister said that a “pro-rata amount” is credited in the post office account of each identified child so that each child receives Rs10 lakhs at the time of attaining 18 years of age. “Children are entitled to receive a monthly stipend between the age of 18 and 23 years, by investing the corpus of Rs10 lakhs into monthly income scheme of Post Office. They are entitled to receive the amount of Rs10 lakh on attaining the age of 23 years. Children below the age of 18 years, who are staying with their relatives, receive Rs 4000 per month under the Mission Vatsalya Scheme of this Ministry,” the minister said.
The WCD ministry had previously vehemently rejected the numbers projected by the science journal The Lancet which had then reported that over 19 lakh children became orphans in India under the pandemic. Then WCD minister Smriti Irani had rejected the numbers as “sophisticated trickery intended to create panic among citizens”.