Source: [https://x.com/politicalhindus/status/2031308828122427713](https://x.com/politicalhindus/status/2031308828122427713)

  
In the aftermath of the largest vaccination campaign in human history, the Supreme Court of India has taken a step that many public health systems adopted long ago. It has asked the government to create a framework to compensate the extremely rare individuals who suffer serious adverse events after vaccination. The Court’s March 10 directive does not question the safety or necessity of COVID vaccines. Rather, it reflects a widely accepted global public health principle that societies benefiting from mass vaccination should also support the small number of people who may experience severe adverse reactions.

On 10 March 2026, the Supreme Court directed the Union Government to frame a no fault compensation policy for individuals who suffer serious adverse events following COVID vaccination. The order was issued in Rachana Gangu & Anr v. Union of India (WP(C) No.1220/2021) and connected matters including Union of India v. Sayeeda K.A.

The bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta clarified three key points.

1. The existing Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI) monitoring system will continue.
2. Relevant adverse event data should be periodically placed in the public domain.
3. The compensation framework does not constitute an admission of liability or fault by the government or any authority.

Importantly, the Court did not determine that any specific death was caused by vaccination, but only directed the government to create a framework to address rare adverse event claims.

The Court also declined to establish a new expert body, observing that India already has a scientific mechanism to investigate vaccine related adverse events.

This direction also builds on the Court’s earlier decision in Dr Jacob Puliyel vs Union of India (2022), where the Supreme Court upheld the government’s vaccination policy while emphasizing transparency in reporting adverse event data.

*   [https://indiankanoon.org/doc/185869689/](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/185869689/)

While the detailed judgment text is awaited, the directions themselves reflect an approach common in many public health systems globally. Compensation mechanisms are designed to support rare victims of vaccine injury without undermining the overall safety and public trust in vaccination programs.

# Why do many countries use vaccine compensation systems?

No fault vaccine compensation programs exist in many countries because even extremely safe vaccines can rarely cause adverse reactions.

For example

United States: National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

[https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation](https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation)

United Kingdom: Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme 

[https://www.gov.uk/vaccine-damage-payment](https://www.gov.uk/vaccine-damage-payment)

These systems provide financial relief without requiring victims to prove negligence in court.

India’s Supreme Court directive therefore aligns the country with a widely accepted public health principle: ensuring fairness for rare adverse outcomes while maintaining public confidence in vaccination programs.

# What was the scale of India’s vaccination campaign?

Any discussion of COVID vaccination must be viewed in the context of the crisis itself.

By 2024, more than seven million deaths globally had been recorded due to COVID according to the World Health Organisation.  
 

[https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/coronavirus-disease-(covid-19))

India’s vaccination campaign became one of the largest and fastest public health programs ever undertaken, delivering more than 2.2 billion doses across a population of 1.4 billion people.

At its peak, India was administering over 10 million doses per day, one of the fastest vaccination rates ever recorded globally.

The two primary vaccines used in India were

1. Covishield, based on the Oxford AstraZeneca platform and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India

2. Covaxin, Bharat Biotech’s inactivated virus vaccine.

Both underwent large Phase 3 trials before authorization. Covaxin’s Phase 3 study included 25,800 participants, demonstrating approximately 78 percent efficacy against symptomatic infection.  
 

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X21006411](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X21006411)

The rapid development of COVID vaccines did not skip scientific safeguards. Regulators used a strategy known as parallel trial phases, which allowed testing stages to overlap while maintaining strict safety monitoring.  
 

[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2030600](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2030600)

# What does the scientific evidence say about vaccine impact?

Large scale research consistently finds that vaccines dramatically reduced mortality during the pandemic.

A major modelling study published in The Lancet estimated that COVID vaccines prevented nearly 20 million deaths globally in 2021 alone.  
 

[https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(22)01223-4/fulltext](https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(22)01223-4/fulltext)

In India, vaccination substantially reduced severe disease and hospitalisation.

A modelling analysis published in JAMA Network Open found that vaccination campaigns significantly reduced mortality risk during peak transmission waves.  
 

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797578](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797578)

Other modelling analyses suggest vaccination likely prevented millions of additional deaths in India, particularly during and after the Delta wave when vaccine coverage expanded rapidly.

During the pandemic, the risk of death from COVID infection was thousands of times higher than the risk of serious vaccine related adverse events.

At the same time surveillance systems tracked adverse events. India’s AEFI program recorded a very small proportion of serious adverse events relative to the total number of doses administered, consistent with global vaccine safety data.  
 

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25152459231169380](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25152459231169380)

 

Investigations by Indian medical research institutions have also found no evidence linking COVID vaccines to unexplained sudden deaths, which have instead been associated with underlying conditions or prior COVID infection.  
 

[https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1972578](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1972578)

# Why compensation is often publicly funded

A common question raised in debates around vaccine compensation is why governments, rather than pharmaceutical companies, often administer such programs.

In most countries vaccine injury compensation schemes are publicly administered systems designed to resolve claims quickly without prolonged litigation. The U.S. Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, for example, is funded through a small excise tax on vaccines and administered by the federal government.  
 

[https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation](https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation)

The rationale is pragmatic. Vaccines are a national public health intervention deployed at massive scale, often during emergencies. Compensation systems therefore function as a risk sharing mechanism, ensuring rare victims receive support while allowing vaccination programs to continue without delay during outbreaks.

# Misinformation you may see online and what the evidence shows

Claim The Supreme Court ruling proves vaccines were unsafe.  
 Evidence The Court ordered a compensation framework but explicitly clarified that it does not imply government fault or vaccine danger.

Claim Vaccines were rushed without proper trials.  
 Evidence COVID vaccines used overlapping trial phases but still conducted large scale human trials with global safety monitoring.  
 

[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2030600](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2030600)

1. Claim Many deaths were hidden.  
\> Evidence India operates a national AEFI surveillance system that investigates and reports serious adverse events.

2. Claim Compensation means authorities are admitting liability.  
\> Evidence No fault compensation programs exist worldwide precisely because rare injuries can occur even when vaccines are developed and administered correctly.

3. Claim India forced vaccination on citizens.  
\> Evidence India’s vaccination program was voluntary, unlike mandates implemented in several countries during the pandemic.

4. Claim Sudden cardiac deaths among young people were caused by vaccines.  
\> Evidence Investigations by Indian research institutions found no causal link between vaccination and unexplained sudden deaths.  
 

[https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1972578](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1972578)

# A policy for fairness not fear

Taken together, global scientific evidence consistently shows that the benefits of COVID vaccination far outweighed the risks during the pandemic wrt number of overall deaths.

Public health decisions during a once in a century pandemic inevitably involved difficult trade offs. India’s vaccination drive was conducted at an unprecedented scale while also supplying vaccines to many other countries.

The Supreme Court’s directive should therefore be seen for what it is. It strengthens trust by ensuring support for the rare individuals who experience serious adverse events while preserving confidence in a vaccination program that helped prevent a far greater humanitarian catastrophe.

India’s pandemic response also extended beyond its borders through the Vaccine Maitri initiative, under which millions of vaccine doses were supplied to countries around the world, reflecting Bharat's global dimension of the effort to control COVID that's paying diplomatic dividends as of today.  
  
TLDR: India’s Supreme Court has asked the government to create a no fault compensation policy for rare COVID vaccine injuries. The ruling strengthens transparency and fairness but does not imply vaccines were unsafe or improperly tested.

Article is written by human, proofread, organised and improved by ai.

image source: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HDCo78nasAA0U87?format=jpg&name=large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HDCo78nasAA0U87?format=jpg&name=large)

Supreme Court’s No Fault Vaccine Compensation Directive: What the Order Means and What It Does Not