Ensure payment of compensation to Endosulfan victims: SC to Kerala govt

NEW DELHI: Almost 15 years after deadly Endosulfan sprayed its catastrophic impact on the unborn and the new-borns in Kerala, the Supreme Court directed the Kerala government to ensure payment of compensation to the victims, either from the pesticide manufacturer or from the Center within three months.

During the recent hearing of the case, at the end of January, 2017, the three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of India J S Khehar, directed the state government to consider the feasibility of providing medical treatment for lifelong health issue.

The order by the apex court came in response to a 2010 recommendation of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). It suggested that the Kerala government should pay at least Rs 5 lakh to the next kin of those who died and to those who were unable to move without assistance or were mentally retarded.

The commission also recommended the state government to provide Rs 3 lakh to those with other disabilities.

An NHRC official told Millennium Post that it is a big victory for the commission. “NHRC is the only Human Rights Commission in the entire world which weilds power to put pressure on the authority to ensure justice to victims within the constitutional ambit.”

Endosulfan is banned in 80 countries. In India starting in 1973, it was sprayed from helicopters over the cashew crop in the green valleys of northernmost tip of Kerala three times a year.

The first symptoms of ill health, among humans and livestock, were detected in the 1990s. Farmers described seeing a pile of dead butterflies near a papaya tree, and other insects dying in droves. Frogs gobbled up the dead insects and died. Chickens that ate the frogs also died. Calves were born with twisted legs. One was born with two heads.

In 2001, following protests, the Kerala State Pollution Control Board ordered the Plantation Corporation of Kerala to stop aerial spraying. That same year, one woman’s blood showed 900 times the amount of endosulfan permitted in water.

In 2004, the Kerala high court banned the pesticide. “It was too late,” says MA Rahman, founder of the Endosulfan Victims’ Support Aid Group.

A 2008 report by the Kerala Pollution Control Board confirmed Rahman’s theory, showing the presence of endosulfan in water samples collected from sprayed areas.

Finally, in 2011, the supreme court banned endosulfan throughout India.