High Court strict on Mahakumbh stampede, said – District administration will decide compensation, not commission, deadline fixed for 30 days
Uma Shankar April 30, 2026 07:25 PM
Allahabad High Court issued instructions on compensation claims related to the Maha Kumbh Mela 2025 stampede. The court said that the authority to decide on the compensation claims filed by the victims or their dependents does not lie with the Judicial Inquiry Commission, but with the district administration and the fair authority. The fair officer will have to decide on compensation claims within 30 days.
This order was given by Justice Ajit Kumar and Justice Satya Veer Singh. division bench Gave this while hearing the petition of Sanjay Kumar Sharma.
In the petition, compensation was demanded for the death of a relative in the stampede that occurred on Mauni Amavasya on January 29, 2025. The court, while perusing the affidavit filed by the Secretary of the Judicial Inquiry Commission, said that settlement of compensation claims does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Commission. The work of the commission is only to investigate the causes of the incident, give suggestions for the future and review administrative coordination.
Court instructions regarding compensation
The court said that the state government neither denied the incident of stampede nor the fact that compensation has already been paid to the families of some victims. The court said that when the state itself has accepted the incident and the loss, it is not necessary for the Commission to investigate whether a stampede had taken place or not. To make the compensation process simple and clear, the court set some guidelines.
To simplify the process, the bench laid down the following rules for the fair and district administrations to keep in mind while deciding compensation claims:
Know what instructions the court gave
Every claim for compensation should be made before the District Administration and not before the State Judicial Commission.
While deciding the case of claims, the District Magistrate (Fair)/Fair Officer will have to verify the facts of death of any person or damage to property during the stampede on 29.01.2025.
In every case, the material placed before the Mela Adhikari will have to be examined, so that it can be known that such death took place on that day, i.e. on Mauni Amavasya.
The records produced, documents like investigation report by the police officers and postmortem report prepared by the Chief Medical Officer/Medical Superintendent of the hospital will be treated as undisputed material documents, unless they are disputed by valid contrary evidence for the purpose of ascertaining the death during stampede.
In case of compensation claim, the Fair Officer will have to take a final decision within 30 days of the submission of the claim.
So far as the inquiry by the Judicial Commission is concerned, it shall relate only to points (i) and (ii), and to clause (iii) generally, and not to individual cases. The statements made by the dependents of the deceased before the Commission shall be only in the terms of reference to point (iii) and not for the purpose of deciding the petitions for individual claims for compensation.
Regarding the present case, the bench said that there is an inquest report of the deceased prepared by an SI as well as a postmortem report by a medical officer and these documents have not been disputed by providing any concrete evidence to the contrary. Therefore, the bench directed the fair officer to take a decision within three weeks and file the compliance affidavit by the next date (May 7).
