Madhya Pradesh HC orders action plan to digitize Bhopal Gas Tragedy records

The Madhya Pradesh High Court has directed the Union Health Ministry Secretary, the Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, and the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre to finalize an action plan within a week for digitizing medical records of survivors from the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.

The court issued this order on January 6, and it was made public on Wednesday. A bench comprising Chief Justice SK Kait and Justice Vivek Jain was hearing a contempt petition filed by the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sanghathan concerning the rehabilitation of the gas tragedy survivors. The court expressed concern over the lack of seriousness in executing the task and ordered that the responsible officials meet within a week to finalize a timeline for completing the digitization.

In its order, the court stressed the urgency of ensuring funds are allocated for the project and ordered the submission of daily progress reports. The respondents’ affidavit, filed in response to a December 9, 2024, court directive, mentioned that medical records from before 2014 were in poor condition, with only 3,000 pages being scanned daily. This means the work could take around 550 days, but exact timelines will be clearer once the process starts.

Additionally, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has submitted a proposal for setting up a cloud server under the e-hospital project. The financial approval from the Finance Department is pending, with funding expected in the 2025-26 fiscal year. Once approved, the scanned records will be uploaded to the server, and the digitization work should be completed in approximately 12 months.

The 1984 Bhopal gas leak, one of the world’s worst industrial disasters, occurred on the night of December 2-3 when methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide factory. The tragedy claimed at least 5,479 lives and left thousands more with long-term health issues.