Published: Wednesday, Jun 9, 2010, 0:22 IST | Updated: Tuesday, Jun 8, 2010, 23:24 IST
By Harish Gupta | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_bhopal-verdict-dims-chances-of-n-bill-passage_1393759
The Bhopal gas tragedy judgment, which has outraged the nation, has claimed its first victim: The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s favourite civil nuclear liability bill.
South Block sources conceded that the judgment had buried chances of the bill being passed in the monsoon session of Parliament. Prithviraj Chavan, minister of state for science and technology and the prime minister’s office (PMO) said the government would look into all aspects of the bill. “Bhopal has taught us that we are unprepared,” he said, and clearly sent out the message that the country needs a law on public liability for radiological accidents.
The core discord between the government and the opposition over the civil nuclear liability bill is on the amount of compensation and capping the liability of the operator, in case of an accident. The amount is pegged at Rs500 crore for the operator of the nuclear plant, while the total liability will be Rs2,087 cr.
Opposition members said the amount was grossly insufficient as the compensation in the United States for similar accidents is Rs45,000 crore (see box). Former finance minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha opposed the bill and forced his party to take a firm stand on the issue, when the bill was introduced in Parliament in May.
Chavan had then said that if such high compensation was sought, no foreign investor would invest and India would be deprived of clean energy. The bill was then referred to Parliament’s standing committee on science and technology under the chairmanship of T Subbiram Reddy. Incidentally, the 31-member standing committee has not met even once since the bill was referred to it for consideration.
Apart from financial compensation and the cap on such compensation, there were areas of discord such as limiting the period for demanding relief to 10 years and that civil courts would have no authority to try the accused (operator) in case of a mishap.
