POLITICS-INDIA: Bhopal Legacy Haunts Nuclear Liability Bill http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50802

The U.S.-based multinational Union Carbide got away lightly after causing the world’s worst industrial tragedy at Bhopal, but that legacy has come to haunt U.S. corporations seeking to tap India’s newly opened market for nuclear power equipment.On Mar. 15, the government was to have tabled the civil nuclear liability bill, which would cap foreign firms’ liability at 450 million U.S. dollars in the event of an accident at a nuclear power plant and nail responsibility on the Indian state operator instead of on the equipment supplier. 

But because opposition parties to the right and left of the ruling Congress party were uneasy about such provisions, the government sensed that there was a good chance that the bill would be defeated and decided not to table it. "There is little chance of the bill being tabled again in the present form," said N D Jayaprakash, who works for the cause of the survivors of the 1984 tragedy in the central Indian city of Bhopal. "The government will have to drastically increase the quantum of compensation to meet international standards."