Parliament on Friday remembered the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy on its 26th anniversary with Vice President Hamid Ansari saying the human tragedy of unparalleled magnitude had been compounded by “indifferent attitude” of the authorities.

Both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha observed silence after paying tributes to thousands people who died in the tragedy that took place on the night of 2nd December, 1984 due to leakage of deadly gas from the Union Carbide’s pesticide plant.

In the Rajya Sabha, Chairman Ansari said, “The tragedy still haunts us in the form of incapacitated people and children born with deformities. It was indeed a human tragedy of unparalleled magnitude which shocked the conscience of the world.

“The criminal human folly that caused this tragedy has been compounded by indifferent attitude in subsequent years. It is incumbent on us, morally and legally, to do our utmost to support the surviving victims in every manner possible.”

In the Lok Sabha, Speaker Meira Kumar said 26 years ago thousands of people lost their lives and many were affected due to leakage of the deadly methyl isocyanate gas from the plant.

She said a pledge should be taken to adopt measures to prevent occurrence of such incidents in future.

26 yrs on, woes refuse to end for Bhopal Gas Tragedy victims

Even as the 26th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas disaster is being observed in the city on Friday, its victims continue to be plagued with a number of problems that have not been resolved over the years.

Abdul Jabbar, convenor of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangthan, the first and the biggest organisation working for the disaster victims said that they were not suffering from one single problem alone.”If only the victims had been treated properly, adequate compensation was given to them and those guilty of the disaster has been punished, they would not have anything to complain,” he said.But Jabbar said it was unfortunate that all these things have not been done and continue to add to the unending daily misery of the victims.

“Even if one accepts the BJP contention that the Congress had not done anything for the gas victims, one would like to ask what the BJP has done in the last seven years during which it has been in power in Madhya Pradesh,” Jabbar said.

The Sangthan convenor said that as far as the disaster was concerned, there was not much difference between the Congress and the BJP and both were working like two sides of the same coin.Both these political parties had not done anything for the victims and only used them to further their own political ends, he added.

The Sangthan convenor said that both the Congress and the BJP had only been shedding crocodile tears for the gas victims from time to time.”It would be wrong to assume or presume that the two parties had even a bit of real sympathy for the gas victims,” Jabbar said.

He said it was really very sad that the issue of the Bhopal gas disaster was not raked during American President, Barack Obama’s recent visit to this country.This was one opportunity that could have been used effectively to help the gas victims but it had been allowed to go waste, Jabbar added.

“Long back, noted freedom fighter Bhagat Singh had written that we can get freedom from the whites but how can we fight the black Englishmen since it would be difficult to identify them in our midst,” he said.What had happened in Bhopal indicated the manner in which multi-national companies were playing with the lives of people in this country.

The first judgement relating to the Bhopal gas disaster case was delivered in June this year by the Chief Judicial Magistrate but the guilty were given bail within an hour after it was announced.

Jabbar said this meant that because of the bail, it was ensured that not even a single person went to jail even for a day following a disaster which claimed more than 15,000 lives and left injured more than five lakh persons.”This also is a very sore point with the victims who feel that they have been cheated as no one has been sent to jail in connection with the disaster,” he said.

Following the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s judgement, Bhopal again hogged headlines in newspapers for some time and led to lot of activity for the victims.All this had not helped the victims in anyway as it had not led to resolution of their problems, the Sangthan Convenor added.