Minister for road transport & highways Kamal Nath reinforced the government point of view by stating that the financial liability for the Bhopal gas tragedy must be placed on Dow Chemicals.
A key member of the reconstituted Group of Ministers (GoM) on the Bhopal industrial disaster, Mr Nath believes “we will have to use every legal method available to bring Dow to book since they have purchased the assets of Union Carbide and are therefore liable for all the consequences of these assets.”
“We are petitioning the Jabalpur court for a quick judgement but we don’t want to wait for the judgement in order to recover compensation. We want to move ahead,” the minister stated.
Mr Nath expressed apprehension that “there could be more than one million tons of toxic waste lying in and around the disaster side. The question facing us is how do we deal with it? We are sitting on a toxic volcano.”
The minister was participating in a public debate on the Bhopal disaster organised by the Madhya Pradesh Foundation. Launching a scathing attack on successive Central governments, Madhya Pradesh minister Babulal Gaur blamed them for denying relief and justice to millions of gas victims.
“Their indifference can be gauged from the fact that the Centre has not provided a single paisa for the treatment of gas affected victims. Nor have they provided financial assistance in the running of the six hospitals and 127 dispensaries providing treatment to the victims. The state government has been spending Rs 45 crores annually on their treatment with nothing coming from the Centre,” Mr Gaur said.
He further took the Centre to task for having announced a relief package ranging of up to Rs five lakh for 42,000 victims but having excluded over five lakh victims who were also affected. Further, Mr Gaur complained that while relatives of 5,295 of the deceased would be provided compensation of Rs 10 lakhs, the actual number of relatives who should have been paid this amount was 15,342.
Sunita Narain ,director, Centre for Science & Technology,felt the Supreme Court has not yet settled the key issue of environmental contamination.
“With high risk technologies being brought into India, what kind of technology regime does the government plan to devise?” Ms Narain asked.