NEW DELHI, India: A Supreme Court panel resumed hearings Wednesday on petitions aimed at overturning the $475 million Bhopal gas leak settlement as more than 500 protesters demonstrated outside the courthouse demanding the accord be rejected.
The three petitions before the five man panel of India’s highest court contested as unconstitutional a 1985 law pushed through Parliament by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress (I) Party making the government the sole legal representative of survivors of history’s worst industrial disaster.
Attorney R.K. Garg told the court that the law deprived victims of the leak of lethal vapors from the now defunct Union Carbide Corp pesticide plant in Bhopal of their individual rights to dispute the February 15 settlement of compensation between the government and the US. based multinational.
The government is singularly disqualified to assume rights to protect the victims Garg said.
Tens of thousands of people still suffer debilitating health problems that prevent from leading normal lives and officials say that on an average one person dies every day from the lingering effects of the gas.
The government had sought $3 billion in damages from Union Carbide contending in a September 1986 civil liability suit that the firms negligence caused the leak. The firm filed a counter suit that blamed the disaster on sabotage by a disgruntled employee and argued that some liability should be borne by the central and state governments.
New Delhi says it agreed to the $475 million settlement because the amount was higher than previous offers made by Union Carbide and legal squabbling could have delayed a court decision for up to 20 years.
The government however, has been widely criticized for accepting what victims, social groups, opposition politicians and newspapers have said is an insufficient sum. Some critics have charged that the settlement was reached through illegal payments to named politicians,
The five man Supreme Court panel that mediated the settlement opened hearings last week on the three petitions disputing the government’s right to represent disaster victims.
However, it withdrew from the hearings after one of the judges disassociated himself from the accord, saying the impartiality of the bench had been unfairly questioned by the press in “a campaign of vilification.”
The panel’s chairman, Chief Justice R.S. Pathak, appointed a new five member panel to hear the petitions.
Outside the Supreme Court, meanwhile, more than 500 people including a number of disaster survivors, held the latest in a series of protests against the settlement, chanting, “Scrap the accord,” and “Down with Union Carbide.”
Should the Bhopal Gas Disaster Relief Act be overturned, the Supreme Court mediated settlement between Union Carbide and the government would have to be canceled.
Under the settlement, Union Carbide and its Indian subsidiary agreed to pay $475 million in return for the quashing of all civil and criminal liability suits arising from the disaster that has so far claimed more than 3,400 lives.
Another 200,000 or more people were injured by choking, blinding fumes that gushed December 3, 1984 from an underground tank at the Union Carbide plant and blanketed large areas of Bhopal. The capital of Madhya Pradesh state, 375 miles south of New Delhi.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 17, 1989
