Victim-Centred Justice Or State Monopoly? Reassessing The Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing Of Claims) Act, 1985
- IJLLR Journal
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
Shradha Tomar, LLM Scholar, NLIU, Bhopal
ABSTRACT
The Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985, was enacted as an extraordinary legislative response to an unprecedented industrial catastrophe. By vesting the Union Government with the exclusive authority to represent all victims, the Act sought to consolidate claims and expedite compensation. Yet, this centralization effectively displaced survivors from the very process intended to redress their suffering, eroding their agency and curtailing participatory justice. While legal scholars have frequently interrogated the adequacy of the quantum of compensation and the controversial settlement with Union Carbide, far less attention has been devoted to the dimensions of procedural justice, victim autonomy, and institutional accountability.
This paper re-examines the Act through the normative lens of victim-centred justice and the jurisprudence of access to justice in mass torts. It contends that the State’s monopolization of victim representation entrenches a paternalistic model of industrial disaster governance, raising profound questions about legitimacy, fairness, and trust in legal institutions. In situating Bhopal within a comparative framework, the paper analyses international compensation mechanisms, including the United States’ September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the Rana Plaza Arrangement in Bangladesh, and the European Union’s Environmental Liability Directive. These models illuminate alternative paradigms in which victims retain participatory rights and procedural safeguards, even within complex and large-scale claims processes.
By juxtaposing India’s state-centric approach with these international experiences, the paper demonstrates the urgent need to reconfigure disaster law frameworks to embed procedural fairness, victim agency, and participatory justice. In doing so, it not only contributes to Indian constitutional and tort jurisprudence but also advances the global discourse on corporate accountability, environmental justice, and transnational governance of industrial disasters.
Keywords: Bhopal Gas Tragedy; Processing of Claims Act 1985; Victim Agency; Procedural Justice; Mass Tort Governance; Industrial Disaster Law; Comparative Compensation Models.
