Survivors and victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, the world’s worst industrial catastrophe, seeking justice for last three decades took their fight to India’s capital New Delhi on Monday.

Five women survivors of the Union Carbide poisonous gas disaster began indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Several hundred survivors and their children, who traveled more than 700 kilometers to reach Delhi, are staging a sit-in to support the hunger-strikers. The survivors are demanding additional compensation for those affected people and revision of the Curative Petition filed in the Supreme Court about figures of death and injury caused by the disaster 30 years ago.

Five Bhopal-based organizations, working for the welfare of survivors of the tragedy, have called on the prime minister to correct the errors of the previous government on the issue of compensation. The organizations, which have joined the agitation are Bhopal Group of Information and Action; Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pensionbhogi Sangharsh Morcha; Children Against Dow Carbide; Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh and the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha.

Ms Rashida Bi, president of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh said, “In 2010 the Group of Ministers on Bhopal decided to pay additional compensation of Indian rupees 100,000 but left out as many as 93 percent of the survivors without any scientific or legal basis. We are calling upon this government to correct that and pay additional compensation of Indian rupees 100,000 to all those affected by the disaster.”

“As per the decision of the GoM on Bhopal, the federal government filed a Curative Petition seeking additional compensation from Union Carbide and its current owner Dow Chemical in December 2010. But the figures of death and extent of injury caused to the victims were grossly downplayed,” said Balkrishna Namdeo of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pensionbhogee Sangharsh Morcha.

Ms Rachna Dhingra of BGIA said: “We decided to take our protest to New Delhi after the betrayal of the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. In December 2011 Chouhan had said that each affected person deserved compensation of Indian rupees 500,000 yet he has done nothing to ensure that we get what is our legal right. Instead he is helping the American corporations by downplaying the damage caused by the disaster in the Curative petition filed by the state government.”

Said Nawab Khan, president of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha, said, “The government’s apex research agency, the Indian Council of Medical Research, (ICMR), had reported that over 12,000 people died due to the disaster till 1993.”