New Delhi, June 17 (IANS) A day before the meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday asked the Congress "to own up" that its government provided safe passage to then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson after the 1984 tragedy.
Reacting to an interview of former foreign secretary M.K. Rasgotra to a news channel about the government having assured safe passage to Anderson following a decision taken by the home ministry headed by P.V. Narasimha Rao, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said the Congress should speak about the compulsions in sending back the then Union Carbide chief.
"There have been a number of revelations. Every revelation is coming from some very important person. All are saying that there was an understanding in letting Anderson go. No revelation has been contradictory to this. It is high time Congress owns up and does not any longer browbeat the public," Sitharaman told IANS.
IANS was the first to report that Anderson had come to India only on getting an assurance of safe passage.
Gordon Streeb, who was then the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy here, told IANS Tuesday that Anderson came to India only after getting an assurance of "safe passage" from New Delhi.
Sitharaman said that the Bhopal gas leak case had thrown up some very important issues, including the need to redraft the civil nuclear bill and preparedness in case of an industrial disaster.
She said while the GoM was expected to look into the relief and financial assistance to the victims, it was important that they also got justice.
The Congress said that various issues pertaining to Bhopal gas leak were being looked into by the GoM. Party spokesman Manish Tewari said that he had not seen the interview of the former foreign secretary and was not in a position to comment.
"Since there is an institutional framework in the form of a GoM, whatever reaction has to come will come from the Gom," he said.
Rasgotra, who was foreign secretary when Anderson came to India after the Bhopal gas leak, said in an interview with CNN-IBN news channel that the then Union Carbide chief was assured of a "safe passage" following a decision taken by home ministry which was then headed by P.V. Narasimha Rao.
"He (Gordon Streeb, the then deputy chief of the US mission here) said Anderson wanted to come here," Rasgotra said. Anderson had requested a "safe passage" through the US embassy, he said.
Rasgotra clarified that then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was subsequently told about Anderson getting a safe passage, to which he did not object.
The GoM meets here Friday to discuss different aspects of the fallout of the Bhopal court verdict in the gas leak case. The GoM, headed by Home Minister P. Chidambaram, was reconstituted last month.
Anderson, who was briefly arrested in Bhopal Dec 7, 1984 and then quickly released on bail, was later declared a proclaimed offender by an Indian court. He is now retired and lives in the US.
Tonnes of lethal gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal on the night of Dec 2-3 in 1984, killing nearly 3,000 people instantly and many thousands over the years.