Mukhyamantri Vyapari Durghatna Bima Yojana (Chief Minister Trader Accident Insurance Scheme)

What is the Chief Minister Trader Accident Insurance Scheme?

Mukhyamantri Vyapari Durghatna Bima Yojana, known in English as the Chief Minister Trader Accident Insurance Scheme, is a group accident insurance arrangement run by the State Tax Department (Commercial Tax) of Uttar Pradesh for the state's registered trading community. The scheme covers a registered trader against death caused by an accident or by murder, and against partial or total disability arising from the same causes.

According to the State Tax Department's own "Department at a Glance" page, the sum assured under the scheme is Rs 10 lakh. That figure is not the original one, the cover was Rs 5 lakh until it was raised to Rs 10 lakh with effect from 27 October 2017. The department describes the scheme as operating since 2000-01, which makes it one of the longer-running trader welfare measures in the state.

Two features make this scheme unusual among Indian state insurance schemes, and both are worth understanding before anything else:

• The state government pays the whole premium. The trader contributes nothing. There is no annual renewal fee, no member contribution and no deduction from any tax payment.
• Enrolment is automatic. The department's position is that all traders registered with it are covered. A trader does not fill a proposal form, does not submit a health declaration and does not receive a separate policy document. The State Tax registration is the qualification.

The stated policy purpose is to encourage traders to register and to pay Goods and Services Tax on time, by attaching a tangible welfare benefit to being inside the registered tax net rather than outside it.

Who is eligible for the trader accident insurance, and who is not covered?

Covered automatically:

• Any trader or business holding a live registration with the Uttar Pradesh State Tax Department, which in practice means an active GST registration administered by the state.
• The cover attaches to the registered trader as a person. On death, the benefit passes to the nominee or legal heir; on disability, it is paid to the trader.

Not eligible / not covered:

• Unregistered traders cannot apply. A shopkeeper, wholesaler or small business operating without a State Tax registration is outside the scheme entirely, and there is no route to buy in.
• Traders whose registration was cancelled or surrendered before the date of the incident are not eligible. Because the cover is derived from the registration, a lapsed registration means no cover on the date it mattered.
• Death or disability from ordinary illness is not covered. The insured events are accident and murder. A trader who dies of a heart attack or a disease has not suffered an insured event under this particular scheme.
• Employees, family members and business partners who are not themselves the registered person are not separately covered. The registration identifies one registered trader; the scheme does not extend cover to staff.

There is no age bar, no income ceiling and no requirement to be a particular size of business published by the department. A very small registered trader and a large registered wholesaler carry the same Rs 10 lakh cover.

How much does the scheme pay?

The Rs 10 lakh is the maximum sum assured. Full payment applies to death and to total disability; partial disability claims are settled at a lower figure according to the extent of disability certified by the medical authority. The department does not publish a public percentage table for partial disability, so a claimant should ask the assessing office how the proportion will be worked out in their specific case rather than assuming a figure.

How to apply for a claim under the trader accident insurance scheme

There is no application to join, the cover already exists. What follows is the route for making a claim after an accident, a murder or a disabling injury.

1. Report the incident to the police immediately and obtain a copy of the FIR. Because the scheme insures against accident and murder specifically, a contemporaneous police record is the single most important document in the file. Delay in lodging an FIR is the most common reason a claim gets stuck.
2. Collect the medical and civil records. For a death claim, obtain the death certificate from the registrar and the post-mortem report where one was conducted. For a disability claim, obtain a disability certificate from a competent medical authority stating the nature and extent of disability.
3. Establish who is entitled to receive the money. If the trader had recorded a nominee, that person claims. If not, the legal heir must produce a succession certificate or legal heir certificate issued by the competent authority.
4. Approach the State Tax office where the registration is held, the sector or range office under the Deputy Commissioner concerned. Ask for the current claim checklist. The department has not put a standard downloadable claim form on comtax.up.nic.in, so the office copy is the authoritative version.
5. Submit the claim with the registration certificate, the FIR, the death or disability certificate, the nominee or heir proof, the claimant's Aadhaar and bank account details, and any additional paper the office asks for.
6. Obtain a receipt or acknowledgement carrying a diary or reference number. Keep it — it is what lets you follow up.
7. Follow up through the same office. Since 15 June 2018 the department itself settles claims, so there is no insurance company branch to visit and no policy number to quote. The file moves within the department for verification and sanction, and payment is released to the claimant's bank account.

How is the scheme administered?

The administration history matters, because it determines who a claimant deals with:

• Until 14 June 2018, the scheme was underwritten by an insurance company. For the policy year 15 June 2017 to 14 June 2018, the Oriental Insurance Company Limited, Lucknow was the selected insurer.
• From 15 June 2018 onwards, the State Tax Department operates the scheme itself. Claims are examined and sanctioned inside the department and paid from government funds rather than by an insurer.

A practical consequence: there is no third-party surveyor, no insurance ombudsman route and no policy wording booklet to cite. The reference point is the government order under which the department runs the scheme, and the authority is the State Tax officer handling the file.

How many claims are actually settled?

The department publishes claim counts, and they are modest in absolute terms: 202 trader families benefited in 2023-24, and 143 families in 2019-20. Read those numbers correctly. They are not a rejection rate. They reflect that accidental death and murder are, thankfully, rare events across a registered trader population, and that many eligible families never claim because they do not know the cover exists. Awareness, not scheme capacity, is the binding constraint here.

Why do claims get rejected or delayed?

• No FIR, or an FIR filed very late. Without a police record establishing an accident or a homicide, the department cannot classify the event as insured.
• Registration not live on the date of the incident. A cancelled or surrendered registration removes the basis of the cover.
• The cause of death is illness, not accident. This is the most frequent mismatch between what families expect and what the scheme actually covers.
• Dispute over the entitled claimant. Where no nominee was recorded and several heirs come forward, the file waits for a succession or legal heir certificate.
• Incomplete papers. A missing post-mortem report, a bank passbook copy in a different name, or a disability certificate from an authority the department does not accept will each hold up sanction.

The fix in nearly every case is documentary rather than legal: get the missing certificate, get the names on Aadhaar and bank records to match, and resubmit through the same office rather than starting a fresh file.

Where do you complain if the claim stalls?

• Escalate first to the Deputy Commissioner / Joint Commissioner (State Tax) in charge of the zone where the registration is held.
• Beyond that, the Commissioner, State Tax, Uttar Pradesh is the departmental head for the scheme.
• A written grievance can also be filed on the Uttar Pradesh government's integrated grievance system, Jansunwai (jansunwai.up.nic.in), which generates a complaint number and routes the matter to the concerned department for a time-bound reply.

Always keep a photocopy of the complete claim file and the acknowledgement number. A grievance without a reference to the original submission is much harder to trace.

Points traders most often get wrong

• You do not need to buy anything. Any person offering to "enrol" you in this scheme for a fee is not offering a government service. The cover is free and automatic.
• Record a nominee where the department allows it. Settlement is substantially faster for a recorded nominee than for heirs who must first obtain a succession certificate.
• Keep the registration active. A trader who stops filing and lets the registration lapse also, quietly, loses a Rs 10 lakh accident cover for the family.
• This is not health insurance. For medical treatment costs, a registered trader's household should look to Ayushman Bharat or a separate health policy; this scheme responds only to accident, murder and the disability they cause.

How to check your claim status

There is no member login or portal reference number for this scheme, because there is nothing to enrol in, cover is automatic and there is no separate policy record for a trader to look up online. The only thing that generates a trackable status is a claim filed after a death, murder or disability. Here is how a claimant actually follows one up.

1. Use the diary or acknowledgement number from the filing office. When a claim is submitted at the State Tax sector or range office, the office issues a receipt carrying a diary or reference number. That number, not any policy number, is what the office uses internally to locate the file.
2. Go back to the same office in person, or call it. Since 15 June 2018 the State Tax Department settles these claims itself, so status enquiries stay within the same office that took the claim, there is no insurer call centre or branch to contact instead. Ask for the Deputy Commissioner (State Tax) or the assessing officer handling nominee/heir claims for that sector.
3. Ask specifically what stage the file is at. A claim typically sits in one of three stages: document verification, medical or police-record cross-check, and sanction/payment. Naming the stage when you ask (rather than only asking "has it been approved") usually gets a more precise answer than a generic status query.
4. If the local office gives no clear answer, escalate in writing. A written follow-up addressed to the Joint Commissioner (State Tax) of the zone, referencing the original diary number, puts the enquiry on record and is harder to leave unanswered than a verbal visit.
5. Use the Jansunwai portal (jansunwai.up.nic.in) if the file has stalled for an unreasonable period. A grievance filed there against the State Tax Department, citing the claim's diary number and the date of filing, generates its own tracking number and forces a time-bound departmental reply, which is useful when direct follow-up at the office has not produced movement.
6. Once sanctioned, track only the bank credit, not a cheque or dispatch. Payment under the current departmental arrangement goes directly to the claimant's bank account, so after sanction the relevant check is the claimant's own account statement rather than waiting for any physical instrument.

Because the department has not published a portal where a claimant can type in a reference number and see a live status, every one of these routes depends on the paper acknowledgement issued at filing. Keeping that receipt, and quoting its number every time you follow up, is what actually moves a stalled file.