The government is responsible for making good the shortfall in compensation for the Bhopal gas tragedy victims, the Supreme Court asserted on Tuesday and dismissed the Centre’s curative plea to increase the amount.

The Centre had sought compensation of Rs 7,413 crore, up from the original settlement amount of Rs 750 crore, from Union Carbide’s successor companies.

A curative petition is the last remedy available to a litigant before the top court after exhausting options such as an appeal or a writ petition followed by a review petition. In the Bhopal case, no review petition was filed and the apex court made an exception by allowing the Centre to submit a curative petition.

A five-judge bench ruled that it was the responsibility of the government to make good the deficiency in the compensation and termed as “gross negligence” the failure to take out insurance policies on behalf of the surviving victims.

One of the world’s worst industrial disasters, the Bhopal gas leak of 1984 had claimed 5,295 lives and caused injuries and ailments to over5.3 lakh people.

“The responsibility was placed on the Union of India, being a welfare state, to make up for the deficiency and to take out relevant insurance policies. Surprisingly, we are informed that no such insurance policy was being taken out. This is gross negligence on the part of the Union of India and in breach of the directions issued by this court in the review judgment. The Union cannot be negligent on this aspect and then seek a prayer to fix the responsibility on the UCC (Union Carbide Company),” the bench, headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, said.

The court questioned the logic of the Centre making the demand, in 2011, for increased compensation more than two decades after a settlement for Rs 750 crore was reached and the amount paid by Union Carbide in1989. Pronouncing the operative part of the judgment, Justice Kaul said the 1989 settlement was final and could be overturned only on the ground of fraud, which the government had failed to establish.

“No ground of fraud has been pleaded by the Union of India,” the bench, which included Justices Sanjiv Khanna, A.S. Oka, Vikram Nath and J.K. Maheshwari, said. “We are unsatisfied with the Union of India for not furnishing any rationale for raking up this issue after two decades,” the bench observed. No official copy of the judgment had been released till late Tuesday evening.

Union Carbide had earlier told the court that it would not pay a “farthing” more, wondering under what “jurisdiction” it could be compelled to cough up the enhanced amount. The curative petition had been filed by the erstwhile UPA II government in 2011seeking enhancement of compensation to Rs 7,413 crore from the Rs 750 crore fixed by the Supreme Court on February 14, 1989.

The petition was filed following outrage over the two year rigorous imprisonment handed to six Union Carbide employees by a trial court in Bhopal in 2011, holding them guilty of criminal negligence. According to the government, the 1989 judgment was passed on the basis of incorrect records and calculations arrived at the time of the tragedy that had not logically considered the colossal loss and the cascading effect it would have on generations of victims and their families. Further, the actual numbers of deaths and injuries had been undervalued by officials, the government had said.

The Centre had submitted that contrary to the original assumption that 3,000 people had died and 71,000- odd suffered injuries, government records established that 5,295 people had lost their lives and around 530,000 had been left with injuries or disabilities.

During the hearing, the bench questioned attorney-general R. Venkataramani, appearing for the government, on the failure to disburse Rs 50 crore from the corpus of Rs 750 crore. “We were told that Rs 50 crore of the settlement amount is lying undisbursed. Have you not exhausted the settlement amount? How is Rs 50 crore lying undisbursed? This means people did not even get this money. Are you (Centre) responsible for money not going to the people?” the bench asked. Venkataramani said the money could not be disbursed because of disputes on the claim amount as more and more people sought compensation.