The Supreme Court in its verdict on Tuesday dismissed the Centre’s petition seeking Rs 7,400 crore in additional compensation from Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) successor entities for victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas catastrophe.

The UCC’s successor firms told the Supreme Court that the Indian government never suggested that the settlement (in 1989) was inadequate. The firms’ counsel highlighted that the rupee’s depreciation since 1989 cannot be used to seek more compensation for the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy now.

On January 12, a five-judge panel led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul reserved its judgment on the Centre’s curative plea seeking an additional Rs 7,844 crore from UCC’s successor entities in order to provide higher compensation to the victims.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, representing UCC successor firms, told the bench, which included Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Abhay S. Oka, Vikram Nath, and J.K. Maheshwari, that there are affidavits dating back to 1995 and ending as recently as 2011, in which the Indian government has refuted every single attempt to suggest that the settlement is inadequate.

At the hearing, Salve also mentioned many conspiracy theories related to the issue. He stated that one of the ideas alleged that then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi met UCC Chairperson Warren Anderson in a hotel in Paris prior to the settlement and that Anderson had since retired from his role.

The Supreme Court probed Attorney General R. Venkataramani, who represented the Centre, on how the government could file a curative plea without filing a review. It told AG that the Central Government was not forbidden from providing aid to victims of the environmental disaster of the Bhopal gas leak tragedy and that it could not free itself of the welfare state principle by declaring, “I will take it from them (successor firms of Union Carbide Corporation), as and when taken from them, I will pay.”