Five organisations fighting for the rights of the survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster on Saturday said they would move the Delhi High Court against the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for providing exact figures regarding the number of deaths in the disaster.
By failing to provide scientific figure of the deaths due to gas exposure based on their long-term research on over 80,000 survivors, the ICMR is bringing disrepute to itself, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha office-bearer Nawab Khan told media.
Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pensionbhogee Sangharsh Morcha President Balkrishna Namdeo said the documents obtained under the Right to Information Act show that ICMR experts continue to dodge the question posed to them by the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers with regards to the number of deaths.
The organisations decried the deliberate delay by the State and Central Governments on the matter of additional compensation from Union Carbide and Dow Chemical.
Bhopal Group for Information and Action’s Satinath Sarangi said that gas victims had forced the Centre to agree for a revision of data on disaster-related deaths and injury after a four-day waterless hunger strike by six Bhopali women on November 14 last year.
He said the fast was broken only after the Union Minister of Chemical and Fertilisers agreed to seek correct figures of disaster-related injuries and death from concerned agencies.
Sarangi said figures of injuries were to be obtained from records of hospitals run by the State Government. Additionally, the ICMR was to provide scientific estimates of death figures on the basis of their research in Bhopal.
"It was understood that based on the figures provided by the State and Central agencies, the Ministry would consider revising figures presented in the curative petition for additional compensation from US companies," he said.
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh President Rashida Bee said the State Government took six months to send a reply to the letter from the Ministry.
She said almost a year has passed and the regime has still not provided the number of gas exposed people — who visited the hospitals specially built for them in the years following the gas disaster.
Children Against Dow-Carbide’s President Safreen Khan said it was indeed a matter of national shame that the simplest of scientific questions on the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal remained unanswered till today.