The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on December 13, 2024, rejected a petition by Assam’s Baghjan blowout victims seeking interim compensation for an oil and gas disaster on a drilling site operated by Oil India Ltd (OIL), a government-operated hydrocarbon producer. The tribunal based its rejection on a set of ‘preliminary interim measures’ taken by an NGT-appointed committee in August 2020, months before the oil fire from the disputed oil rig was snubbed on November 15, 2020.
As the fire raged for almost six months in 2020, 9,000-odd people were temporarily displaced from their homes. The Assam Government’s initial assessment showed that the explosion caused by the oil spill and leaking condensates from the OIL-operated rig damaged around 1,580 hectares — roughly the size of 1,860 football fields of agricultural fields and tea gardens — and contaminated water bodies.
The victims were classified under three different categories based on the damages as a part of the “preliminary interim measures” by the NGT-appointed committee led by former Gauhati High Court B P Katakey.
Based on the committee’s recommendations, the scale of interim compensation was Rs 25 lakh for the first category, Rs 10 lakh for the second category and Rs 2.5 lakh for the third category. The committee initially divided the victims on basis of severity of damages not just to the households but to their property as well as agricultural farms, gardens and fisheries. Initially, only 12 families were paid Rs 25 lakh as their houses were ‘completely’ gutted by the fire, with the other two categories being termed ‘severely gutted’ and ‘moderate/partially gutted’ respectively.
As the committee investigated the cause of the blowout to estimate the damage, the Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Tinsukia and OIL sat in the negotiations with the local citizens groups who were demanding equitable compensation for all victims. Following demands from the organisations, the DC on August 25, 2020, suggested the committee widen the ambit of the categories of damages. It was based on the demand by a local organisation, Milan Jyoti Yuba Sangh, representing the victims.
The organisation demanded not just the damage but the proximity from the epicentre of the disaster, the disputed oil rig, should be factored in as people endured continuous sound and air pollution resulting from the blowout and fire and “faced the maximum impact on their health, including mental stress and disorientation”.
As the ambit of damages widened, from 12 families, 57 more families became a part of the first category. The organisation demanded that two compensation categories — Rs 25 lakh as interim compensation and Rs 20 lakh as compensation — should be made, which the DC forwarded to the committee.
When the re-survey was conducted by the Tinsukia district administration, an additional 104 families were inducted into the first category as opposed to the earlier containing 57 families. Now, the number of families stood at 161. On the other hand, the remaining 439 families fell in the second category.
On October 31, 2020, the committee inclined to agree with the recommendations of the DC. In one of the meetings, as presented before the tribunal, OIL even agreed to compensate the additional families now placed in the first category and the second category as per the demands raised by the local organisations — with Rs 25 lakh and Rs 20 lakh respectively.
OIL’s legal counsel, however, challenged these decisions during the trial, in which he submitted that OIL was not informed about widening the ambit of the categories. Further, OIL argued that due to the blockade of their equipment by Baghjan residents and their protests, the company was under immense pressure to agree to their demands for two categories and compensating 600 people with Rs 25 lakh under the first and Rs 20 lakh in the second category respectively. During the present trial, OIL stated in its affidavit that admitting additional families to the first category of victims would amount to “unequals being treated as equals.”
On December 13, NGT’s Eastern Zone bench comprising of judicial member, Justice B Amit Sthalekar and technical member, Dr. Arun Kumar Verma, however ruled on behalf of OIL and rejected the petition.
The bench claimed that OIL had already admitted its liability to 600 families to the extent of Rs 15 lakh each for 161 families and Rs 10 lakh each to 439 families. It added that the prayer to pay an additional Rs 10 lakh to families who had already been paid by OIL is ‘completely without merit’.
The bench did not consider the submissions of the DC to widened categories and the inclination of the NGT-appointed committee’s recommendations. As these submissions and recommendations never crystalised into an order by the NGT, the bench did not consider them while delivering the verdict.
“We are quite satisfied that 161 families who have been placed in Category-[i] do not stand at par with the “initial 12 families” for whom the compensation of Rs 25 lakh was determined under the head Category-[i]. Any such direction would amount to unequals being placed at par with equals,” stated the bench while pronouncing the judgement.
NGT’s judgement has not gone down too well with the people from Baghjan village. “We are shocked by the verdict of the honourable bench. The NGT-appointed committee and the then Tinsukia DC redefined the categories following a survey by government departments,” Papul Gogoi, secretary of Milan Jyoti Yuba Sangha told Down To Earth.
Manoj Hazarika, one of the lead petitioners, maintains that no amount of compensation can bring people like his neighbour, Sukreshwar Neog, back. “My neighbour’s house was not completely gutted. The ambit of the categories was only extended because of the chemical [Polycyclic Hydrocarbon] that was released in form of condensates seeped into the houses, fields and water bodies. Studies done government institutes have indicated that they stay on the soil for decades and cause cancer. Can one live in a house drenched with condensates?” asked Hazarika.
Neog, his neighbour, consumed rodenticide when he returned to see his house from a relief camp in 2020 after the disaster and never woke up.