INDIA
The party said the effort now should be to address this failure instead of pointing fingers at one another.
The Congress today said the then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson was able to leave the country after the Bhopal gas tragedy due to a "systemic failure" and maintained that instead of pointing fingers, the effort should be to address it.
"At the end of it, there was a systemic failure and there is a need to address it," party spokesperson Manish Tewari said. "If we go into the game of finger-pointing, there can be no end. I can ask the BJP about Rs1 lakh it received as donation from Dow, as was reflected in the affidavit it filed before the Election Commission."
Tewari's comments came on a day when TV channels reproduced the sound bytes given by Anderson and Arjun Singh before the Union Carbide chief left the country on December 7, 1984, three days after the world's worst industrial disaster.
"House arrest or no arrest or bail, no bail, I am free to go home... There is a law of the United States... India, bye bye. Thank you," Anderson had said.
Standing just outside the Union Carbide plant, Singh had said, "There was no intention to prosecute anyone or try to, sort of, harass anyone.
"Therefore, he [Anderson] was granted bail and he agreed to be present in court when the charges are made," the then Madhya Pradesh chief minister had said.
Asked about these statements and whether the central government was aware of them, Tewari said, "I reject the conclusions with the contempt they deserve. There was never ever any intention of the central government to allow any culprit to go scot-free."
The spokesperson said a group of ministers had been constituted to look into all aspects of the issue.
Tewari vehemently denied that then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had any knowledge of Anderson being allowed to leave, saying that imputing such motives was "despicable" as Gandhi had lost his mother just a month before and lost his life a few years down the line.
"We are all anguished by the verdict," he said. Attacking the BJP for pointing fingers on the Anderson issue, Tewari asked why the then attorney general of India had changed his opinion.
Tewari said that in the 26 years since the Bhopal gas tragedy, eight governments had come to power at the Centre and pursued the case along with many national and international NGOs.
"After this, if the country feels, and rightly feels so, that justice was not done, it clearly points out it was a systemic failure and it needs to be addressed," he said.
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