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It would be four years since Sukleshwar Neog, a 53-year-old farmer hailing from Baghjan in Assam’s Tinsukia district, consumed poison when his house and farm was destroyed by a blowout from an Oil India Limited (OIL)’s oil rig. On July 15, the Kolkata bench of National Green Tribunal (NGT) allowed two weeks to the Assam Government to file the Tinsukia deputy commissioner’s affidavit on a case related to paying interim compensation to the victims of the Baghjan oil and gas blowout, including the slain Neog’s family.
For Manoj Hazarika, one of the petitioners in the Baghjan case, this will be the fourth time that such an extension to the Assam government was granted by the tribunal.
As per the NGT order, legal counsel for Assam, Malabika Roy Dey could not submit the affidavit online “due to e-filing difficulties”. The bench comprising of Justice B Amit Sthalekar and expert member, Amit Kumar Verma, will now deliver the final verdict on September 5.
“We have our faith in the judiciary, but we are shocked that there are deliberate delays from the end of the Assam government,” said Hazarika’s co-petitioner, Niranta Gohain, representing the Natun Rongagara village. In 2023, when the residents of these villages approached Supreme Court, the apex court transferred the matter to NGT and ordered the tribunal in January 2023 to settle the interim compensation issue expeditiously in two months.
According to the video recording of the proceedings, the bench told Dey to produce a hard copy of the document, which she could not place before the court. Dey later asked for more time.
The case was delayed earlier too when the affidavit prepared by the deputy commissioner of Tinsukia was found lacking in detail. Translations to English or Hindi from Assamese were missing and, in some cases, the documents were simply unreadable. Judge Sthalekar later asked Dey to segregate the affidavit into several volumes.
The bench also directed the Assam government to complete the survey of Natun Rongagara, comprising of 1,300-odd families. As one-time compensation, 652 families in Natun Rongagora received Rs 50,000 and 637 families received Rs 25,000. The co-petitioner, Niranta Gohain, hailing from the same village, also added that as a result of the Supreme Court verdict from last year, the Tinsukia district administration was supposed to conduct the survey of Natun Rongagora. “Although the surveys by Tinsukia district administration happened at the same time for Baghjan and Natun Rongagora, the findings of these surveys were never made public. As per recommendations of the NGT-appointed Katakey Committee, the affected families have been placed in three categories, where Rs 25 lakh, Rs 15 lakh and Rs 10 lakh was supposed to be paid as interim compensation. After the full damage assessment, all the affected victims were supposed to get the final compensation,” added Gohain.
Neog and his family from Baghjan, on the other hand, received Rs 15 lakh for the damage to the house and their farm along with 600 other families. In case of Baghjan, after the initial damage assessment, only 12 families were paid Rs 25 lakh, which was a considered as one-time compensation. These were the victims from the immediate vicinity of the OIL-operated rig in Baghjan, whose houses were completely gutted in the fire. The petitioners claim that in a meeting between a local organisation, Milan Jyoti Sangha from Baghjan, Tinsukia district administration and OIL, it was decided that all 600 families of Baghjan would be paid Rs 25 lakh as compensation.
The Tinsukia district administration maintains that most of the amount deposited by OIL was fully disbursed by the company. In a letter to the petitioner in September 2023, deputy commissioner Swapnil Paul maintains that OIL had deposited Rs 103.14 crore of which Rs 103.13 crore had been disbursed.
OIL took responsibility of the disaster, telling NGT’s Principal Bench that it will pay a further amount of Rs 68.05 crore to 600 affected families. OIL submitted that it would pay Rs 15 lakh each to 161 families where damage to the houses is total and Rs 10 lakh each to 439 families, where damage to the house is severe.
With the Assam government allegedly delaying the court proceedings, the village residents accuse the Tinsukia district administration of underplaying the disaster and its impacts.
“It has been more than four years since I have been waiting for the final compensation for my house. We have made several representations about our plight to the chief minister. Yet, they keep delaying the final verdict. How long does one wait?” said a Baghjan resident requesting anonymity.
The disaster is one of the longest oil rig blowouts ever experienced in the country, which took place during the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, causing irreparable damage to an ecologically fragile habitat, the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park.