From rxpgnews.com
Untraced Bhopal gas victims' claims may be cancelled
By IANS,
Apr 3, 2007 - 7:31:23 PM
New Delhi, April 3 - The government Tuesday sought the Supreme Court's permission to close the compensation claim account worth Rs. 500 million of 14,000 untraceable victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
Additional Solicitor General Amarender Saran told a bench of Justices C.K. Thakker and Altamas Kabir that the government had been unable to trace over 14,000 claimants despite making best efforts to locate them through newspaper advertisement and notices to their last known addresses.
Accordingly, the government should be given the permission to close down their compensation claim accounts, he said.
However, counsels Shamona Khanna and Naveen R. Nath, appearing for some NGOs fighting for the victims' rights, opposed the plea saying that the government never adopted any scientific approach to identify and trace the missing victims.
They said the missing victims were barely seven or eight years old at the time of the tragedy and the government was seeking to identify them now on the basis of their childhood photographs or addresses.
The counsel said tracing victims on the basis of their childhood photographs and addresses was an irrational method and an exercise in futility.
They sought the court's direction to the government to make renewed and 'rational' efforts to trace them, considering the fact that many victims might have moved to various other districts of Madhya Pradesh or other parts of the country in search of employment.
The Bench then directed the NGOs to file their objections and responses in an affidavit and posted the matter for further hearing.
As per Bhopal's welfare commissioner's report, out of Rs 15.42 billion fixed for payment of compensation to 572,029 victims, Rs 14.91 billion has been disbursed to 556,850 victims till date.
According to the welfare commissioner's report there were 17,222 victims who were yet to get the compensation. However, the additional solicitor general said that were only some 14,000 victims to be paid the compensation.
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