A five-judge constitution bench on Tuesday peppered the Centre with questions for seeking enhancement of compensation for Bhopal gas tragedy victims to Rs 7,413 crore from the original settlement amount of Rs 750 crore.
Union Carbide Company asserted it would not pay a “farthing more”, wondering under what “jurisdiction” it could be compelled to cough up the enhanced amount.
The actual number of deaths and resultant injuries were undervalued by officials, the government said.
The Centre had submitted that contrary to the original assumption that 3,000 people had died and over 71,000 had suffered injuries, the government was in possession of records which establish that the number of persons who died was 5,295 and those who suffered injuries and disabilities were around 5,30,000.
A bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul told attorney-general R. Venkataramani that an amount of Rs 50 crore from the payout of Rs 750 crore still remained to be disbursed and asked who should be blamed for this.
Appearing for Union Carbide, senior advocate Harish Salve maintained that the company had already paid the settlement amount of Rs 750 crore pursuant to an apex court judgment of 1989 and the matter could neither be reopened, nor was the company willing to make any further payments.
“My client is not willing to pay a farthing more. They say that is what they settled for and if you (Centre) don’t want to settle, let the law take its own course. That is our submission,” Salve said.
He added: “They (Centre) want to burden me (Union Carbide) with payment of an additional amount…. I really don’t know under what jurisdiction they can do this.”
The bench, which included Justices Sanjiv Khanna, A.S. Oka, Vikram Nath andJ.K. Maheshwari made it clear to Venkataramani that the government must first justify the maintainability of the curative petition for enhanced compensation that had been filed over 20 years after the 1989 verdict.
The curative petition had been filed by the erstwhile UPA government in 2011 following nationwide outrage over the meagre two-year rigorous imprisonment handed to six former Union Carbide employees by a trial court in Bhopal in 2011.
As the formal hearing commenced on Tuesday, JusticeKaul noted that normally acurative petition is filed after a review petition. But in this case, no review petition had been filed and a curative petition had been submitted with certain purported documents for reopening the settlement deed.
“Can any fresh documents be permitted in a curative petition? If there is some data which has emerged, we may or may not be inclined to do it. But it cannot be a re-hearing. The settlement was arrived at a particular stage of time. Can we say that 10 years hence, 20 years hence or 30 years hence, open the settlement on the basis of fresh documents?” the bench asked the attorney-general.
Venkataramani responded that the case was an “exceptional matter” and several “emerging facts” had to be considered.
“Have you disbursed the full amount?” the bench asked, to which the AG answered in the affirmative.
However, the court corrected the Union government’s highest law officer, saying: “We were told that Rs 50 crore of the settlement amount is lying undisbursed....”
