Madhya Pradesh HC asks govt to digitise medical records of Bhopal gas tragedy patients

Court issues the directives while hearing a contempt petition filed by Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sanghathan on rehabilitation of survivors

Jabalpur: The Madhya Pradesh High Court has directed the Union Health Ministry Secretary, State Chief Secretary, and Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre to finalise an action plan within a week to digitise medical records of the 1984 gas tragedy patients. The HC’s order, dated January 6, was uploaded on Wednesday.

A division Bench of Chief Justice SK Kait and Justice Vivek Jain issued the directives while hearing a contempt petition filed by the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sanghathan on rehabilitation of survivors of the tragedy. “It seems that the respondents are not serious about the work to be completed,” the high court observed.

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“Accordingly, the Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, and Chief Secretary, Madhya Pradesh, along with Director, Bhopal Memorial Hospital Research Centre, shall sit together within one week and finalise the action plan so that the issue in the present petition can be executed in a timeline and expeditiously,” it stated.

The court also directed the respondents “to file day-to-day progress report of the first meeting of the aforesaid authority and ensure the release of funds required for the purpose in question”. The affidavit filed by the respondents in compliance with the court’s directive of December 9, 2024, stated that “the medical records prior to the year 2014 are very old, therefore, only 3,000 pages per day can be scanned”.

“According to which, it is estimated that the work will be completed in a total of about 550 days, however, the exact timelines will be ascertainable only after the work is commenced,” the affidavit stated.

For establishing the cloud server under the e-hospital project, a proposal has been obtained from the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which is pending financial approval of the Finance Department, for which budget is expected to be allocated in the financial year 2025-26, the affidavit said. Thereafter, the scanned record will be incorporated into the said server, it said.

According to the proposal given by the NIC, the entire work would be completed in 12 months. On the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, killing at least 5,479 persons and leaving thousands with serious injuries and long-lasting health issues.