04 December,2010 07:23 AM IST | | Agencies
Seeks increase from Rs 750 cr to Rs 7,700 cr
The Centre has moved the Supreme Court seeking enhancement of the compensation for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy from Rs 750 crore to Rs 7,700 crore.
Activists burn an effigy of former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson in Bhopal yesterday, the 26th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy
More than 5,000 people were killed by leakage of poisonous gas from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal on the intervening night of December 2 and 3 in 1984.
The filing of the curative petition coincided with the 26th anniversary of the tragedy in which the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers has sought a re-examination of the apex court's February 14, 1989, judgment by which the compensation was fixed at Rs 750 crore and subsequent orders of February 15 and
May 4 determining the mode of payment and settlement.
The SC had also dismissed the petition to review its judgments and orders on October 3, 1991. The petition filed by the Centre in the capacity of legal guardian of the victims of the world's largest industrial disaster sought payment of additional damages from Union Carbide Corporation, Dow Chemicals Company, which owns UCC since 2001, Mcleod Russel India, which has 50.9 per cent shareholding of UCIL and UCIL, and which is currently known as Eveready Industries Ltd.
The curative petition settled by Attorney General G E Vahanvati contends the figure of Rs 750 crore was arrived at by the apex court on "incorrect and wrong assumptions".
