• Post-midnight on December 3, 1984, Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) (Chemical formula- CH3NCO or C2H3NO)leaked from the pesticide plant of Union Carbide (now Dow Chemicals), an MNC, in Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal.
  • It is estimated that about 40 tonnes of gas and other chemicals leakedfrom the Union Carbide factory.
  • Methyl isocyanate is extremely toxic gasand if its concentration in the air touches 21ppm(parts per million), it can cause death within minutes of inhaling the gas.
• It is one of the worst chemical disasters globally and still continues to have its ill effects on the people of the affected areas.
• After the tragedy, the government of India enacted a Public Liability Insurance Act (1991),making it mandatory for industries to get insurance the premium for this insurance would contribute to an Environment Relief Fundto provide compensation to victims of a Bhopal-like disaster.

Supreme Court dismissed a curative petition

• In the ‘Union of India And Others. v. M/s. Union Carbide Corporation And Others’, the Centre sought  7,844 crores from the US-based firmsthrough a curative petition it filed in 2010, for additional compensation for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. A curative petition can be filed after a review plea against the final conviction is dismissed. It is meant to ensure there is no miscarriage of justice and to prevent abuse of the process.
• The Centre’s claim for a curative petitionwas based on a demand for additional compensation, in a reexamination of the Supreme Court’s 1989 order where compensation was decided as Rs. 750 crores.
• The plea also sought a relook at the Court’s ordersrelating to modes of payment and settlement, on grounds that the settlement was based on an incorrect estimate of the total number of deaths, injuries, and losses. The Centre also said that the environmental damage caused was never factored in, and thus sought to reopen the settlement on the basis of fresh documents.
• According to the plea, the previous figure for deaths stood at 3,000and for injuries at 70,000. However, the Central government contended that the actual number of deaths was 5,295, whereas injuries reached 5,27,894.

What did the court decide today?

• A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Courtheaded by Justice SK Kaul and comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Abhay S Oka, Vikram Nath, and JK Maheshwar dismissed the petition filed by the Centre. Reading out the last two paragraphs of the main judgment, the bench stated, “It is the Union’s own stand that the commissioner has adjudicated all claims to the procedure established by law where the possibility of reimbursement was provided.”
• Further, it was admitted in the proceedings culminating in the court’s order of 19 July 2004 that the amount of settlement was found to be in surplus of the actual requirement.The claimants had been provided more compensation than what was reasonably awarded to them under the law, the court said, adding that “this reinforced the position that the settlement amount was sufficient to compensate the claimants”.
• The Court also noticed the absence of an insurance policy by the Central governmentand said, “Responsibility was placed on the Union of India, being a welfare state, to make good the deficiency and to take out the relevant insurance policy. Surprisingly, we were informed that no such insurance policy was taken out. This is gross negligence on part of the UOI and is in breach of the directions made in the review judgment. The Union cannot be negligent on this aspect and then seek a prayer from this court to fix such responsibility on the UCC.”
• Moreover, the court found no legal basis to revisit the claimafter three decades of the tragedy and said that doing so could open up Pandora’s box. “Either a settlement is valid or to be set aside in cases where it is vitiated by fraud,” the Court reasoned, adding that there was no such fraud in this case.
• The Court was equally dissatisfied with the Centrebeing unable to produce any rationale for raking up this issue decades later. “Even assuming that the figures of affected persons turned out larger than contemplated earlier. An excess amount of funds remain available to satisfy such claims,” the Court said pointing to a sum of “Rs 50 crores lying with the RBI”, while directing it to be utilized by the government for the satisfaction of pending claims, if any, in accordance with the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985 and the schemes under it.