Sushma spots a Bhopal ‘fixer’ in a book -17/10/10

Sushma spots a Bhopal ‘fixer’ in a book

17/10/10

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj on Saturday alleged that there was a “fixer” who had helped Union Carbide strike the paltry $470 million compensation settlement for victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1989.



She based her allegation on a quote in a new book ,”Six Decades of Law, Politics and Diplomacy”, by senior advocate B Sen, and demanded a probe into this “fixer”. “We were fortunate to get a good fixer,” the book quotes a Union Carbide lawyer as having told Sen when the latter congratulated him in Washington a few months after the settlement. The UC lawyer did not elaborate and walked away, the book says.



Distributing the relevant pages from the book — which she claimed to have chanced upon four days ago — to journalists at the party headquarters here, Sushma said Sen should be questioned because the allegation was not only sensational but also very serious. She claimed the alleged fixer was alive but feigned ignorance about his identity.



When it was brought to her notice that the distributed pages of the book contained factual errors, the senior BJP leader said the errors should be glossed over.



Sushma claimed the allegation also put a question mark over the Supreme Court because it was a court-assisted settlement, and requested it to take suo motu cognisance and order a probe under its own supervision.



If the SC doesn’t take cognisance of the matter, she added, the Centre should file an FIR against unknown persons or the MP government should include the matter in the judicial commission constituted by it. She said she had already spoken to Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan about expanding the commission’s terms of reference.