By IANS,
Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government has not done enough for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy and their next generations, an activist said Thursday.
A day before a group of ministers’ (GoM) scheduled meeting in Delhi, Abdul Jabbar, convener of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udhyog Sangathan, told reporters here that the state government was only focusing on the upward revision of the official figure on deaths in the tragedy.
The state government was not addressing issues like rehabilitation of victims, criminal petition and environment damage, he said.
On the night of Dec 2-3, 1984, the leakage of tonnes of methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal killed many thousand people. Government records showed 5,295 deaths, 4,902 with permanent disability, 35,455 with temporary disability and 527,894 with minor injuries.
After a Bhopal court’s June 2010 verdict in which two years’ imprisonment was awarded to eight accused, the verdict was criticised across the world and the central government set up a GoM on issues related to the tragedy.
The state government has not taken sincere steps to find out the number of people who died after 1997, said the activist.
Jabbar said that last year applications were sought from survivors on whether their children had got cancer or kidney-related problems because of the gas tragedy.
Nearly 8,000 applicants with cancer and 4,000 with kidney ailments responded. Till then, government records showed cancer cases to be 2,000 and kidney cases to be 1,000.
No research was done by the government on the impact of the poisonous gas on the second and third generation of the victims, he said.