Union Home Minister P Chidambaram told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that he felt a deep sense of guilt the executive and the Parliament had let down the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy. He said he was being charitable when he said governments had handled the case most unsatisfactorily. Chidambaram also said this was compounded by the fact that there were too many judicial proceedings. He also said Bhopal was a collective failure. What happened in Bhopal was a manmade tragedy. There were enough indications to authorities that the tragedy would happen. When it did,virtually everybody was unprepared. People died,were maimed,girls who are now of child-bearing age were affected, he said. Chidambaram said that in the last 26 years of the tragedy,there had been many Prime Ministers in power and too many judicial proceedings were allowed to complicate matters. These were on compensation,on criminal cases,on the extradition of Union Carbide boss Warren Anderson and on the matter of the toxic waste lying around. He said the judiciary took charge of the proceedings. But the responsibility of a tragedy of this proportion should have squarely been with the executive that is answerable to Parliament,he added. Chidambaram said the Bhopal court's order in June this year that gave only two years to eight former top bosses of Union Carbide,including UCIL's non-executive chairman Keshub Mahindra was a wake-up call to the government. He also said the 1996 order of the Supreme Court that diluted charges against the accused was in his opinion wrong. In 14 years,it occurred to no one that the verdict should have been challenged, he said. Chidambaram also admitted there were no records of that period Who met who? Who had conversations with whom? We relied on data from the media, the Home Minister said. He also said there were no records of who from the Home Ministry made calls to then Madhya Pradesh Chief Secretary in December 1984 asking for bail for Warren Anderson. He also said then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had nothing to do with letting off Anderson since he was on tour at that time. On the remedies,the Home Minister said all recommendations of the government were in place and that they would be implemented. Compensation would be paid to the victims of Bhopal by the Union government,and all medical facilities would be free to the victims and their next generation,Chidambaram said. A secure landfill or a deep burial site would be created for the toxic waste that still remains and this would be done jointly by the Madhya Pradesh government and the Centre. Chidambaram said the government would go after the extradition of Warren Anderson despite its shortcomings. The Opposition on Wednesday had said the Bhopal gas tragedy was a case of corporate manslaughter. Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj had said the government allowed this incident to happen,to save money and to make profit. She had accused the then Congress government of letting off the accused.
