New Delhi, August 13: With Rajiv Gandhi under attack from Opposition in Bhopal gas leak case, government today put the onus of any wrong-doing on three Prime Ministers between 1989 and 1996 who included Congress leader P V Narasimha Rao.
Home Minister P Chidambaram, while replying to a debate in the Rajya Sabha on Bhopal gas tragedy, said the elected political class had let down victims of the 1984 disaster and things could have been dealt with in a more satisfactory manner.
“The compensation cases were decided between 1989 and 1991. There were three Prime Ministers in that period…The criminal cases were decided between 1989 and 1996. There were three Prime Ministers during that period,” he said.
“Everyone who has been a Prime Minister and headed a government is in one way or the other responsible and accountable,” he said.
Between 1989 and 1996, the Prime Ministers were V P Singh, Chandrashekhar and P V Narasimha Rao. Chidambaram’s contention comes in response to Opposition attack on Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, over the then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson being allowed to leave the country after his arrest in the gas tragedy case.
Chidambaram’s remarks holding Rao along with V P Singh and Chandrashekhar responsible came a day after then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and Congress leader Arjun Singh pointed fingers at Rao over Anderson being allowed to leave the country.
“The question of criminal liability, the question of compensation, the question of providing medical and health care, everything was abdicated to in favour of judiciary by the executive and Parliament,” Chidambaram said.
Referring to the June 7 judgement of the trial court in Bhopal sentencing Keshub Mahindra, the then non-executive Chairman of Union Carbide and others to jail terms of two years each, Chidambaram said, “that was a wake up call. It jolted everybody from his or her slumber”.
He said the judgement by the court was wrong. “But assuming that it was right, it did not apply to Warren Anderson,” he said.
After the judgement, the government set up a group of ministers to look into the case afresh. “The fact that so many years had passed was certainly a constraint,” he said.
Contending that there were no records about how Anderson was allowed to leave the country, he said “truth is stranger than fiction…I have tried my best to put the right question and seek the records. But these records are simply not there”.
-PTI