By IANS,
Kolkata : West Bengal’s ruling Left Front Wednesday invoked its bete noire Mamata Banerjee’s catchy slogan of “ma-mati-manush” (mother-land-people) as it appealed to all MPs from the state to oppose the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill.
Left Front chairman Biman Bose’s appeal came in the wake of a Madhya Pradesh court’s verdict Monday convicting seven people of criminal negligence in the 1984 Bhopal gas leak, sentencing them to two years imprisonment and then bailing them out within minutes.
“In the interest of the Indian people, the land, mothers and sisters of the country, all elected Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs from the state should rail against the (civil nuclear liability) bill. If it is passed then more such tragedies will occur and the perpetrators from outside like the US will go scot free. The liability will be squarely on the Indian state,” Bose said at a media meet here.
“We are issuing the appeal in the interest of the ma-mati-manush. Everybody should protest against the bill and oppose it. We are extending this appeal to the opposition MPs also,” he said after a meeting of Left Front partners.
Asked whether the Left Front was trying to hijack Trinamool Congress chief and Railway Minister Banerjee’s popular slogan, Bose said: “The Left Front always speaks in the interest of the Indian people, the land and the mothers and sisters of the country. Due to the Bhopal gas tragedy, 25,000 Indian people have died, our land has suffered, and mothers and sisters are giving birth to crippled children.”
The Left Front partners decided to chalk out a programme for raising awareness on the nuclear bill by involving all left organisations.
The meeting also sympathised with the people of Bhopal for not getting justice even 25 years after the tragedy.
The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010, which has been referred to as the parliament’s standing committee on science and technology after fierce opposition from major political parties, fixes the maximum amount of liability in case of a nuclear accident at Rs.500 crore, to be paid by the operator of the nuclear plant.
The legislation makes the operator exclusively liable in case of an accident, but there is no mention of the suppliers’ liability.
These provisions have prompted parallels with the Bhopal gas tragedy. Lethal gas had leaked out from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal on the night of Dec 2-3, 1984, killing thousands instantly and many more later. An estimated 15,000 people have died since then, though some activists say the figure is closer to 25,000.