On the occasion of the 38th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy on Saturday, a group of survivors demonstrated at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi demanding that the government come out with accurate figures of deaths and health hazards due to the disaster.
A petition has been signed by the 40,000 survivors demanding correction be made in the curative petition for additional compensation to be heard by the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court on January 10, 2023.
The senior advocate in the case for Bhopal survivors, Karuna Nundy, and Dalit labour rights activist Nodeep Kaur among other personalities and citizens joined the demonstration to support the fight and struggle of Bhopal survivors, a press statement by survivors' organisations said.
Rashida Bee, President of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh said, "93 % of the Bhopal survivors have been assigned in temporary injury category and been given only Rs 25,000 as compensation. This is the kind of injustice that the Manmohan Singh government sought to remedy when it filed the curative petition in the apex court in 2010 for additional compensation from the American corporations Union Carbide and Dow Chemical. However, justice cannot be done till the figures of death and extent of injuries caused by the disaster are revised by the present government."
"As per official records, 95 % of gas victims diagnosed with cancers and 97 % of gas victims with fatal kidney injuries have been considered to have suffered only temporary injury due to the disaster. This demonstrates how injuries of Bhopal victims have been downplayed in the court," said Balkrishna Namdeo, President of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pensionbhogee Sangharsh Morcha.
“The current Chief Minister had written to the then PM Manmohan Singh that the injuries of the Bhopal victims were permanent injuries and not temporary, as presented in the curative petition. However, the state government is yet to reiterate that before the Supreme Court when the hearing has started," he said.
Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information & Action said, "The Madhya Pradesh government has stated in the Supreme Court, in another matter, that 15,242 people died as a result of the Bhopal Gas Disaster. However, the state government failed to take steps to revise the inaccurate figure of 5295 deaths presented in the curative petition. How can justice be done if the court is not made aware of the true extent of the damages caused by the disaster?"
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha’s Shahzadi Bee pointed out the difference in the amounts of compensation sought by the government and by the survivor associations. "The government is asking for Rs 96 billion as compensation from Union Carbide and Dow Chemical whereas we are demanding Rs 646 billion. The figures we have used to calculate the compensation amount are from official records and that of the Indian Council of Medical Research, a central government agency."
This disparity in the figures forwarded by the survivors and government reflects downplaying and insensitive approach on the part of the government while calculating relief packages, she added.
Nousheen Khan of Children Against Dow Carbide chose the occasion to encourage residents of Delhi-NCR to actively demand better air quality.
Delegation meets union minister
A delegation consisting of Dhingra, Shahzadi Bee and Rashida Bee met with the Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Mansukh Mandaviya and apprised him of their current situation and submitted a set of documents, showing actual figures of death and fatalities, the legal basis for their demand for revised relief package memorandum of demands.
The documents also include an affidavit on morbidity and mortality caused by the exposure of Methyl Isocyanate in Bhopal by Dr Swarup Sarkar, a public health expert who has worked in senior positions in the Government of India, UN agencies and other international institutions and demanded that these documents should be included in the joint compilation of reports that will be filed before Supreme Court.
