Poll after poll & gen after gen, woes of gas victims linger on

Bhopal: Bhopal has been grappling with the aftermath of Bhopal gas tragedy — the world’s worst industrial disaster — for four decades. The tragedy continues to affect nearly half a million people, causing persistent health and environmental issues.
Despite this, the Bhopal gas disaster and it impact has been drowned in the cacophony of this elections and never made it to the agendas of main parties.Three central govt institutes in the state capital, AIIMS Bhopal, Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC), and the National Institute for Research in Environmental Health (NIREH), are designated to support the gas victims.
In Dec 2022, the MP high court instructed AIIMS Bhopal to provide free cancer treatment to gas victims. Immediately, AIIMS Bhopal announced compliance however, in April 2024, a review by the Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee revealed that only ‘13 cancer patients affected by the gas tragedy received medical care in February and March, 2024’, casting doubt on the efficacy of the initiatives.
BMHRC operates a 350-bed super-specialty facility. Despite a substantial annual budget from the Union govt, the hospital’s annual report for 2020-21 lacks mention of several common conditions among gas victims.
NIREH, the third institute, is tasked with research on environmental health related to the Bhopal disaster. However, allegations have surfaced that NIREH has shifted its focus away from environmental health. Its website lacks environmental health reports and contains 23 MIC gas-related reports. The use of the researches to better living conditions of the victims remains.