India’s Supreme Court on March 14 rejected a revisionary petition filed by the former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh-led government in 2010, for increased compensation to the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, referring to a nearly four decade old industrial disaster in central India that claimed at least 4,000 lives and resulted in over half a million non-fatal injuries.
“We are unsatisfied with the Union of India for not furnishing any rationale for raking up this issue after two decades,” a five-judge bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said.
“Settlement can be set aside only on the ground of fraud. No ground of fraud has been pleaded by the Union of India,” the judgement reasoned.
The industrial disaster took place in a plant operated by the US-based Union Carbide Corporation, now owned by Dow Chemicals.
After hearing detailed arguments, a five-judge bench headed by Supreme Court’s Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul on January 12, had reserved its verdict.
Bhopal gas tragedy: How much compensation was sought?
The Indian government had sought an additional compensation to the tune of nearly one billion dollars (or ₹7,844 crore).
Bhopal gas tragedy: Why was increased compensation sought?
The Indian government had said that given the sheer scale of the tragedy, the compensation of ₹715 crore ($470 million) in 1989 was “inadequate”.
The depreciation of the Indian rupee since 1989 has also been asserted as a ground to seek a top-up of compensation for the industrial gas leak’s victims.
Bhopal gas tragedy: Supreme Court on ‘welfare state’ principle
Earlier, India’s Supreme Court grilled the current government while pointing out that the government was not prohibited from granting relief to the Bhopal gas tragedy victims, and that it cannot free itself from the responsibility of governing a welfare state principle saying, “I will take it from them (successor firms of Union Carbide Corporation), as and when taken from them, I will pay.”
ALSO WATCH | Bhopal Gas Tragedy: Victims, their kin seek adequate compensation from government
Considered a “chemical accident” and the “world’s worst industrial disaster”, the Bhopal gas tragedy occurred on the night of 2-3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, about 850 km south of New Delhi. The official number of immediate deaths was 2,259. Later revisions to the toll suggested that about 8,000 people died within two weeks of the leak, while another 8,000 died from gas-related diseases in the immediate years after 1984.
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