Only 42 Bhopal gas victims severely hit, insists government

As a group of union ministers meets today to debate the government's approach to the Bhopal gas disaster case in a curative petition before the Supreme Court, a report says it is not keen to change the classification of victims of the tragedy to allow for higher compensation for thousands of the affected or admit a higher number of fatalities.

However, it is ready to consider doubling the relief demanded for the relatively small number it currently accepts as dead and those permanently scarred due to the lethal gas leak, the Times of India  says in a report.

The government seems to be reluctant to change the classification which puts a vast majority of victims in the lowest 'temporary ill' or with 'minor injuries' category or admit to higher mortality figures, as this could also create a precedent for all future cases of a similar nature, says the report.

The curative petition was filed to seek higher compensation for victims on the ground that there were errors in reporting the number of people affected.

The curative petition says the government classifies 527,894 victims as those with 'minor injuries' and 35,455 as with 'temporary injuries'. It classifies only 4,902 with permanent injuries, and a mere 42 as 'utmost severe' cases.

This is despite the fact that the actual casualties are widely known to be in multiples of these figures. The safety manual of Union Carbide itself notes that 'major residual injury is likely in spite of prompt treatment' if someone breathes the lethal methyl isocynate gas that had leaked from Carbide's Bhopal plant in December 1984 and made the air poisonous in large swathes of the city.