By Pervez Bari
BHOPAL: Four organizations representing survivors of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal expressed hope that their public interest litigation in the state high court will succeed in getting adequate compensation to those survivors whose injuries were misclassified earlier.
During a joint press conference on Wednesday, the organizations revealed that the Madhya Pradesh High Court has recently sent notices to the state and central governments to respond to the issues raised in the organizations’ petition by September 22nd, 2025, the next date of hearing.
“In our petition, we have presented official information that shows that 90% of survivors who were paid ex-gratia sums for cancer were classified as having suffered only minor or temporary injury due to the disaster. The same has been done regarding injuries of 95% of those who were paid ex-gratia sums for chronic kidney diseases. We are asking the Court to direct the Indian government to consider injuries of such survivors to be permanent and of utmost severity and award them Rs. 5 lakhs as compensation”, said Nasreen Khan, member of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha, the leading petitioner organization.
Injustice done
Rashida Bee, president of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh, said: “The injustice done to people with cancer and fatal kidney diseases is a clear and simple illustration of the injustice done to the majority of the Bhopal survivors in the matter of compensation. Union Carbide’s own document says that exposure to Methyl Iso-cyanate, the gas that leaked in Bhopal, causes permanent injuries, yet 95% of Bhopal survivors have been classified as temporarily injured.”
“We are launching a campaign to raise awareness and document similar misclassification of disaster-induced injuries in the case of other survivors. The scale of injustice is so large that unless volunteers from survivors’ communities come forward for this task, it will not be possible to present a strong case”, said Balkrishna Namdeo, president of Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pensionbhogee Sangharsh Morcha.
Rachna Dhingra of Bhopal Group for Information & Action called upon young people to join the campaign. She said: “Today we need idealistic young people to collect hard evidence of mis-classification of injuries caused by the gas disaster. We will soon be setting up a website and developing an App dedicated to this activity and providing free training to volunteers in the community.”
Meanwhile, it may be recalled here that the Bhopal gas tragedy, which occurred on the night of December 2-3, 1984, when poisonous Methyl Iso-cyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide manufacturing plant, claimed the lives of 3,000 people almost instantly. Over the years, more than 25,000 have succumbed to the effects of the gas, and the tragic legacy continues unabated. Nearly half a million people continue to suffer from the side effects of the toxic exposure, with several thousand permanently disabled.
(Source: India Tomorrow)
