Discussions on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, in both Houses of Parliament, for nearly eight hours, remained only discussions! Nothing as such came out of the discussions which could bring relief to the aggrieved victims.
Initiating the discussion, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, dubbed as "paltry" the relief announced recently for Bhopal disaster victims and demanded a substantial increase in it and asked the government to become a party to a petition filed in a US court to extract compensation from American firm Dow Chemicals. She wanted India to take a cue from the Rs 90,000 crore compensation secured by the US from British Petroleum due to the recent oil spill in Gulf of Mexico to strengthen the case in a US court for more relief to the Bhopal victims. It may be noted that only 13 people have lost their lives due to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Besides, the BP company has taken responsibility of gathering the oil spilt and other cleaning up works.
India should become a party in the suit filed by some NGOs from Bhopal in the New York South court to get "thousands of crore as compensation" for the victims from Dow Chemicals, which now owns the assets of the Union Carbide, she contended.
Similarly, the Union home minister, in his address, repeated the decisions of the Group of Ministers that the compensation had been enhanced in 10-5-2-1 lakh rupees category. However, only 42 to 43 thousand people would get this benefit; what will happen to the rest of the victims is not known. However, today the minister admitted that injustice had been meted out to the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy and successive governments and the judiciary were responsible for it.
The revelation of former MP CM Arjun Singh revolved around politics. Admitting his responsibility for the tragedy, Singh said that the ex-PM late Rajiv Gandhi had no role to play in the escape of Anderson and pointed fingers at the ex-home minister late PV Narasimha Rao and his ministry.
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