Explain long slumber on Bhopal gas: SC

The central government today faced two hurdles on the first day of the hearing of the curative petitions regarding the Bhopal gas leak disaster of 1984.

Chief Justice S H Kapadia told the Attorney General the court would first examine whether the earlier judgments required a review at all. The five-judge bench he headed also asked G E Vahanvati, the AG, to explain why the government had not filed a review petition all these years and had now filed a curative one.

Normally, after a judgment is delivered, there is a provision for review. If that also fails, the last resort is a curative petition. However, the government did not file a review petition but moved the present curative petition after a delay of 14 years.

The arguments will continue next week. The court has clarified that it will hear all interveners in the case, who are several.

In its 1996 judgment, the SC had diluted the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder to negligence, a much lesser charge inviting a light punishment. When the judges asked Vahanvati about the inordinate delay, he said, “I don’t know why it was not filed by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) but a review petition was filed in the case by someone else and it was dismissed. I know all these are against me.”

Justifying filing of the curative petition, counsel said there were a series of problems with the plant of Union Carbide Corporation in Bhopal, leading to the worst industrial disaster in history, killing an estimated 15,000 people in the city and rendering several people sick through their lives.

Vahanvati asserted that top Union Carbide executives were aware of the design defects and the unsafe method of storing lethal chemicals. “They should have known they were sitting on a powder keg. It was a disaster waiting to happen. There was no need for a positive act on the part of anyone. The omissions were bad enough,” the AG said.

The criminal court in Bhopal on June 7 last year had convicted seven executives of the Union Carbide plant to two years of imprisonment. Among them are the then chairman, Keshub Mahindra, Vijay Gokhale, Kishore Kamdar and J N Mukund. The curative petition in the criminal case was filed following a public uproar over the light sentence. The Centre appointed a group of ministers to recommend steps to get the punishment enhanced.

There is another curative petition moved by the government, for enhancement of the $470 million compensation. The figure was arrived at in 1989 in a settlement between the government and the company. The amount has already been dispersed to the victims and a hospital built exclusively for the gas victims. The second curative petition will be heard after the first one raising the issue of criminal liability.