The Centre on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it will pursue its 2010 curative petition seeking additional compensation from United States-based firm Union Carbide Corporation to survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy. The enhancement of compensation, if allowed, will be over and above the $470 million already paid by the company.
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Attorney General R Venkataramani told a five-judge bench, led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, that it is a tragedy unfolding every day and the victims can’t be abandoned. The AG said, “There are various challenges in reopening this matter, but we cannot abandon the victims, because the tragedy is unfolding every day”. He said that the government wants to proceed and he has gone through considerable literature on the reopening of settlement and he will soon submit a note in this regard.
The bench noted the AG’s stand that the government would like to press its curative petition and a number of NGOs would like to be impleaded. It said a compilation needs to be prepared by the AG and the company, which questioned the maintainability of the curative petition. However, the bench clarified that it did not foreclose the rights of the victims to be heard by it and a joint compilation from the parties.
A five-judge bench had in 2011 issued notice to the Union Carbide Corporation, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dow Chemicals, McLeod Russel India and Eveready Industries on the Centre’s curative petition on the grounds that the compensation was determined in 1989 on assumptions of truth unrelated to realities. The government has sought additional funds of over `7,400 crore from the pesticide company.
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The court had dismissed a curative petition filed by the CBI in 2010 for enhancement of punishment, holding that “no satisfactory explanation has been given to file such curative petitions after about 14 years from the 1996 judgment.”