NEW DELHI: On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Disaster, theMadhya Pradesh high court at Jabalpur dealt another blow to the
victims in their quest for justice. The victims of the world's biggest ever industrial disaster have received only about one-fifth of the compensation promised to them under the 1989 agreement. (
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Stung by the injustice of this paltry compensation, the victims had approached the apex court, which had approved the 1989 agreement. It was only in 2004 that the Supreme Court admitted a plea by gas victims seeking to reopen the compensation issue. Three years later, in 2007, the court rejected it, asking the victims to approach the state government.
An application was then filed before welfare commissioner R S Garg who rejected it in January this year. The harried and desperate victims knocked on the doors of the MP high court to quash this order. But the HC turned it down on November 30.
``It's back to square one. We will go back to the Supreme Court again,'' says N D Jayaprakash of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahyog Samiti, which is one of the victims' organisations spearheading the struggle.
The gas leak from Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984 killed an estimated 20,000 people and left over 5.69 lakh people with a range of injuries and disabilities. In 1989, the Supreme Court approved a settlement between the central government and Carbide under which the company agreed to pay $470 million (Rs 713 crore in the exchange rate of the day) as compensation and the government agreed to drop all civil and criminal proceedings against it.
The government declared that this compensation amount was to be distributed amongst 1,05,000 injured and kin of 3000 dead. It soon became clear that this figure of casualties was a gross under-estimate, arrived at without any survey. Yet the government went ahead and distributed the same amount among five times the number originally stated.
Of the Rs 713 crore paid by Carbide, Rs 113 crore was paid to people who had suffered property or livestock damage. The remaining Rs 600 crore was distributed among nearly six lakh victims or family members of those who died. On an average, each victim has received Rs 12,410.
In contrast, in the high profile Uphaar tragedy of 1997, in which after a sustained legal battle for over six years, the kin of those who died got Rs 15-18 lakh and the injured got Rs 1 lakh each. Victims were also paid 9% interest for 6 years elapsed in the court case. In the Bhopal case, no interest was paid.
Criminal cases against Union Carbide officials too are still pending after they were reopened in 1991. A non-bailable warrant against Warren Anderson, chairman of Union Carbide was issued in 1992 by a Bhopal court but remains unserved. Anderson was arrested three days after the disaster and bailed out immediately, after which he fled the country never to return.
Dow Chemical Company, which bought Union Carbide in 2001 has refused to take any responsibility for pending matters and when a Bhopal court asked them to appear in court in 2005, they obtained a stay from the high court.