It took 21 years for the Centre to realise that the compensation paid to the Bhopal gas victims even in the death cases was “grossly inadequate” after a nine-member strong GoM set by the Prime Minister came across abysmal data on the relief to the sufferers of one of worlds’ great industrial disasters.
This has emerged from the curative petition filed by the Centre in the Supreme Court seeking enhanced compensation to the victims form multinational Dow Chemicals and Mc Leod Russel, which had taken over the Union Carbide Corporation. The GoM was set by the Prime Minister to go into the matter after the issue came in the central stage in the wake of the seven top brass of Union Carbide India Ltd were awarded merely 2 years sentence by a Bhopal court in September last.
The GoM headed by home minister P. Chidambaram came across the “eye opening” data on the compensation, which showed that the kin of only 59 dead got compensation more that `2 lakh while the total number of deaths were 5,236.
It was strange for the government to note after 21 years of the finalisation of the settlement with UCC for $470 million compensation award that only 4 families were lucky enough to get an amount in the range of `4 lakh to `5 lakh and the kin of 8 dead got between `3 lakh and `4 lakh, which the GoM now has found “grossly inadequate”.
“A perusal of the actual figures would show that in overwhelming majority of cases the original compensation award in a death case has been far below the average amount of `2.33 lakh that they should have received as per the guidelines of the (Supreme) court. Only in 59 cases, the original compensation awarded is `2 lakh or more,” the curative petition said. The government — seeking the review of the 1989 judgment of the apex court approving its settlement for $470 million with the UCC and 1991 verdict that upheld a special law passed by Parliament giving the right to the government to fight all the compensation related civil suits on behalf of the victims — has now described the award as “irrational” after coming across such a data.
In the cases of various kind of injuries suffered by over 5 lakh victims, which are in a wide range of permanent disabilities, including cancer, the payment was only in the rage of few a thousand rupees.
“The government was of the considered view that there is no rationale in prescribing different ranges of compensation within the category of death cases. It was felt that in all death cases, highest permissible amount i.e. `10 lakh (`5 lakh as original and `5 lakh as pro-rata compensation) should be the uniform basis and the shortfall if any, should be paid by way of ex-gratia,” the petition said.