Compensation disbursal for the victims of the 2020 Delhi riots, which claimed 53 lives, has been the “worst in the history of the Indian republic” and points to the “profound and wanton failure” of the government, a report by an NGO working for the victims has said.

The report, titled “The Absent State: Comprehensive State Denial of Reparation & Recompense to the Survivors of the 2020 Delhi Pogrom” and published by the NGO Karwan-e-Mohabbat, was released by former Congress minister Salman Khurshid here on Wednesday.

“This is arguably the worst performance of compensation payments after communal violence in the history of the Indian republic,” the report stated.

“What emerges from this report is the profound and wanton failure of both the central and state governments in all tasks of reparation during and after the 2020 Delhi communal pogrom — of rescue, relief, rehabilitation, compensation and bridging social divides,” it added.

Neither the Centre — which has policing powers in the capital — nor the Delhi government made budget provisions for compensation, the report pointed out.

It stated that the levels of compensation fixed for the 2020 riots were far below what the courts had ordered for survivors of the Delhi pogrom in 1984.

“The machinery of the state government ensured in the first couple of months immediately following the violence the distribution of ex gratia relief and death compensation to many families, and a small quantum of compensation. But the levels of compensation fixed for the Delhi 2020 riots are far below the levels extended by orders of the superior courts to the survivors of the Delhi 1984 pogrom,” the report said.

“The net outcome is that nearly five years after the violence, after the initial distribution mainly of ex gratia relief and death compensation by the state government, virtually no compensation has been paid to the victim/survivors, and there seems no prospect of this happening in the foreseeable future,” it added.

In 2021, a Delhi Assembly committee had reported that ₹26.09 crore had been paid as compensation to the riot victims. The NGO’s report pointed out that the amount includes compensation to government bodies for damage to public property and that the total claim by victims stood at ₹153 crore.

Delhi High Court had recently intervened to grant eight petitioners their pending compensation.

The report also lists the overlap of agencies, changing norms for identifying victims and a lack of procedural clarity as reasons for the slow and inadequate relief.

“While the claim of the Delhi government that their efforts of rescue were hampered because Delhi police were not under their control. However, everything else — fire department, ambulances, hospitals, etc — were all under the control of the Delhi government and even they failed to respond in a timely and empathetic manner, placing the Kejriwal government in the infamous category of governments, which failed to protect and provide for their own citizens,” the report said.

The report flagged instances of “deliberate negligence” by the state administration — including the police and state hospitals — as claimed by the public health advocacy group Jan Swasthya Abhiyan.

“Providing relief to victims of communal violence is an established administrative duty, yet the Delhi government in 2020 failed, much like Gujarat in 2002. Delhi did not ensure adequate relief camps or basic services, forcing victims out before they had a safe alternative,” the report added.

Khurshid called it “a failure of participatory democracy” that the state did not consult the NGOs doing their job on ground zero.