GoM for enhanced compensation

New Delhi, June 21 (PTI) The Group of Ministers (GoM)
on Bhopal gas disaster is understood to have decided on Monday
to recommend enhanced compensation to the families of those
dead in the gas leak and to those debilitated permanently or
partially.
Sources said the compensation would be to the tune of
Rs 10 lakh for the kin of those dead. Those with permanent
disability would be compensated to the tune of Rs five lakh
and those with partial disability Rs 3 lakh.
The fresh amount decided will be given after deducting
the compensation moneys given to the victims in the past, the
sources said.
The GoM, which concluded its three-day deliberations,
is believed to have decided to make fresh efforts for the
extradition of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson and
to come up with a "clean up" project at the gas plant site in
Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh state in central India in to
bury toxic material there.
Apart from deciding to recommend to the government to
pursue the civil liability of Dow Chemicals, the successor of
UCC world wide except in India by following up on a case in
the Bhopal High Court in its Jabalpur bench.
The GoM, headed by India's Home Minister P Chidambaram,
discussed various issues relating to criminal and civil
liability, relief and rehabilitation and remediation in the
wake of the Bhopal court verdict in the case two weeks ago.
The report is to be presented to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, who reconstituted the GoM in the wake of
nationwide outrage over the light punishment given to the
accused. The Union Cabinet will meet on Thursday to consider
the GoM recommendations, sources said.
On the clean up proposal, the GoM is believed to have
decided that the government of Madhya Pradesh would undertake
the job with technical and financial support from the Centre.
The sources said the ministers also decided that the
government should make a "valiant attempt" to get the
extradition of 89-year-old Anderson, who now now lives outside
New York.
The government would also file a curative petition
before the Supreme Court challenging the dilution of the
charges against the accused in the Bhopal gas leak case. In
1996 the apex court had reduced the charge from 304-Part II
(culpabale homicide not not amounting to murder) to 304 A
(criminal negligence). PTI ACB
MRD