BHOPAL: A convention on April 16 at the city where there was a gas leak which killed thousands of people in 1984 described the Supreme Court settlement of $470 million as inadequate and a “miscarriage of justice.”
The government on February 15 made the deal under which the USS. based multinational paid the sum to the Supreme Court of India in exchange for an end to all civil and criminal proceedings over history’s worst industrial disaster.
The $470 million settlement has been criticized as too low by journalists, human rights workers and opposition politicians and the Supreme Court is currently hearing a petition challenging the validity of a 1985 act that gave the government the sole right to represent all gas victims.
If judges agree to the arguments the settlement could be annulled, opening further bouts of tangled litigation over the Dec. 3, 1984, disaster that left more than 3,300 people dead and some 200,000 others injured.
The two-day convention was organized by the Bhopal Gas Pidit Mahila Udyog Sangathan, a privately funded relief organization for gas victim :, and it was the first such meeting to draw eminent doctors, scientists, jurists and artists from across the nation to bring attention to the plight of the gas victims.
The convention in Bhopal, the site of Union Carbide’s now defunct pesticide plant 375 miles south of New Delhi, concluded with a rally attended by some 3,000 of its participants who agreed on a resolution demanding the government renege on the settlement.
“Protests and condemnation from across the country have made it clear that the settlement is not acceptable and is not only a miscarriage of justice but is actually an outcome of a political decision by the government to protect and placate Union Carbide Corporation,” a statement issued by the participants said.
”The government betrayed the trust reposed in it and succumbed to the pressure of the U.S. multinational,” it said. “The government has deliberately underplayed the magnitude of the economic, social and health damage caused by the disaster with a view to reduce the liability of Union Carbide Corporation.”
Participants also called for the government to pay immediate relief to victims, confiscate all of Union Carbide Corporation.”
Participants also called for the government to pay immediate relief to victims, confiscate all of Union Carbide’s assets in India, turn the ill-fated plant into a disaster memonal, and resume civil and criminal proceedings against the corporation.
India had been demanding $3 billion from the corporation in a suit alleging Union Carbide’s negligence caused the disaster but the corporation in a countersuit claimed sabotage started the leak.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 28, 1989
