We let Bhopal victims down, admits Chidambaram

Describing the Bhopal gas tragedy as manmade, P Chidambaram on Thursday stressed on the need for looking ahead and moving forward.

“What we promise is free and comprehensive medical facilities for life for the victims and also the second generation,” the Union home minister said in the Rajya Sabha.

He did not buttress Arjun Singh’s statement virtually implicating PV Narasimha Rao (who was home minister in 1984) in Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson’s escape. Singh said on Wednesday that there were calls from Rao’s ministry pressurising the state government to release Anderson on bail. But Chidambaram said: “There are no records about who called the Madhya Pradesh chief secretary.”    

He said that successive governments had let down the people of Bhopal. “The tragedy was in the making. There were enough indications to the authorities that a tragedy of this kind would take place. When it happened, of course, virtually everyone was unprepared,” he said.

“We can see the after-effects of this on women, especially young girls, who have since become women and are of child-bearing age; we can see the after-effects on the second generation. And the manner in which the governments addressed this for the last 26 years has been, to be charitable, most unsatisfactory. And what compounded the matter were judicial proceedings... I feel a deep sense of guilt that in all the 26 years the executive and Parliament have not exercised the vigil that they should have done.”

Chidambaram, as the head of the group of ministers on Bhopal, has already recommended that a curative petition be filed in view of the inadequacy of the $470 million compensation and the reduction in the level of the criminal charge from culpable homicide not amounting to murder to causing death by negligence.

In an oblique attack on the BJP, Chidambaram said that in 2001 the government (led by the party) could have taken corrective steps when the present leader of the opposition Arun Jaitley was law minister. Chidambaram added, sarcastically, “they had a more competent home minister”.

Chidambaram’s looking-ahead approach was endorsed by Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan. “We do not want the issue of Anderson’s extradition to be taken up with US president Barack Obama when he comes here in November.”