Date:10/01/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/01/10/stories/2004011001351300.htm

National

Court notice to RBI on relief corpus for gas victims

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 9. The Supreme Court today ordered notice to the Reserve Bank to explain why it had given the figure of Rs. 475.76 crores as the corpus amount remaining with the Union Government for disbursement to the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy as against Rs. 1,360 crores arrived at by the Welfare Commissioner, Bhopal.

A Bench, comprising Justice Shivaraj V. Patil and Justice D.M. Dharmadhikari, ordered notice on an application from Abdul Samad Khan and 35 others of Bhopal pointing out the discrepancy in the figures cited by the Centre quoting the RBI's statement.

Appearing for the petitioners, counsel, S. Muralidhar contended that over Rs. 1,360 crores was yet to be disbursed by the Government out of the total compensation of $470 millions it received from the Union Carbide Company.

However, he said the Centre in its affidavit had stated that the amount was only Rs. 475.76 crores and thus there was a shortfall of about Rs. 885 crores.

He said that since the discrepancy was so huge it had raised doubts about the veracity of these figures.

He wanted the court to ascertain from the RBI how much money was deposited with it in March 1989 by the UCC and Union Carbide India Ltd; how much of this money was in US dollar account and how much in rupees and what money was transferred to the Welfare Commissioner, Bhopal Gas Victims, at different dates and from which accounts.

On the intervening night of 2/3 December, 1984 the worst-ever industrial disaster of 20th century occurred in Bhopal with the leakage of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate and other lethal gases resulting in the death of over 4,000 people on the date of the disaster itself and this figure had swelled to 16,000 over the years during which period the victims had continued to suffer from the after-effects of the gas disaster.

Apart from the deaths, lakhs of others in Bhopal, including unborn children, have suffered from multiple systemic injuries.

Petitioners submitted that the present position as per the records of the office of the Welfare Commissioner was that a total of 10,29,431 claims were received up to March 31, 2002 of which 10,29,254 were adjudicated and of these 5,66,786 cases had been awarded compensation to the tune of Rs. 1151.51 crores and the balance available for disbursement was about Rs. 1360 crores.

Since the Centre disputed the figure quoting the RBI, the Bench issued notice to it.

In a related development, the Bench asked the Madhya Pradesh Government to respond to a suggestion regarding the setting up of an advisory committee to monitor the problems of the gas victims on a day-to-day basis as well as on the facilities available in the hospitals in the State.