Five organisations that have been relentlessly fighting for survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide disaster, better known as the ‘Bhopal Gas Tragedy’, have called for a peaceful Bhopal bandh on Tuesday. They said that the call for bandh has the support of almost all workers, traders and mass organisations in the old city.
Rashida Bee, leader of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh said that through the bandh Bhopal survivors are demanding that the state and central government present correct figures of health damages caused by Union Carbide tragedy in the soon-to-be-heard curative petition before the Supreme Court.
"In its curative petition for compensation from Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals, the central and state governments had presented thoroughly unscientific data on the deaths and health damages caused by the disaster," alleged Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action.
Rachna alleged that internal documents of Union Carbide, USA and the results of the medical research done by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) clearly show that 93 per cent of the survivors have been wrongly categorised as ‘temporarily injured’ and have been wrongfully given a compensation of Rs 25, 000 only. "They should have been given Rs 5 lakh at least, one can compare compensations given in Mangalore airport crash, railway accidents etc," she said.
Balkrishna Namdeo of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pension Bhogi Sangharsh Morcha said that in Jaiprakash Nagar, a community located just opposite the Union Carbide factory where entire families were wiped out on a single night, nine out of ten residents have been categorised as ‘temporarily injured’.
