The Dow Chemical Company, which owns Union Carbide Corporation, on Tuesday said the Indian government had "fully released" UCC and its subsidiary in Bhopal from any civil liability for the 1984 gas tragedy.
India has an appalling record on industrial safety.
Dow Chemical Co hoped an Olympic sponsorship would boost its global cache, but the company's link to a gas leak tragedy 28 years ago threatens to curb some of the benefits from the $100 million advertising deal.
The Madhya Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded a judicial review of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's role in then Union Carbide Corporation Chief, Warren Anderson's exit from India after Bhopal gas tragedy.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday said he was 'disappointed' that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not discuss the extradition issue of Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson and the compensation for Bhopal gas disaster victims during his meeting with United States President Barack Obama. "It was expected that the prime minister would discuss the Bhopal gas tragedy with Obama, but he did not do so," Chouhan told reporters.
Indifferent parent, dithering states and a lethargic Centre have allowed Union Carbide's deadly waste to poison the soil and groundwater in Bhopal.
The Indian government had argued that under Section 304(A), it was an extraditable offence as per the provisions of the Extradition Treaty between India and the US.
Veteran Congress leader Arjun Singh who was Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister at the time of the Bhopal gas disaster in December 1984 today said he would give "appropriate reply at an appropriate time" on the issue.
Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra, was India's foreign secretary at the time of the Bhopal gas disaster in 1984. speaks on whether Union Carbide Corporation chief Warren Anderson asked for and received safe passage, and did Anderson meet senior officials of the government of India while he was in the country.
There's far too much to be said against Nuclear Liability Bill
The extradition request of former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson, the main accused in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, is still under examination as no decision has been taken by the United States Department of Justice in this regard, the Central Bureau of Investigation said in its status report filed with a local court.
The Central Information Commission has held that the External Affairs Ministry should disclose all information related to the Bhopal Gas tragedy, including communication exchanged between it and the Central Bureau of Investigation on the extradition of the then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson.
Keswani witnessed the entire saga of deception of the victims of Bhopal by the Indian and American governments and multinational corporations. He narrates how Union Carbide Corporation's fatal cost-cutting measures sealed Bhopal's fate.
The mystery about who facilitated the escape of Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson's from the country after the Bhopal gas tragedy may never be solved.
With the June 7 Bhopal judgment, India has been reduced to a Fourth World country. This story of shame can only end if the government appeals against the judgment, gets proper criminal liability restored and seriously pursues the case against all the accused.
Dominique Lapierre, author, Indophile and now Padma Bhushan recipient, on the continuing suffering and neglect of the survivors of the Union Carbide gas leak.
Even nearly 30 years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Centre has declined to disclose information on its extradition requests to the United States for then Union Carbide Chief Executive Officer Warren Anderson on the pretext that it will 'impede' investigation into the matter.
A Delhi court on Wednesday allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation to seek extradition of Union Carbide Corporation chairman Warren Anderson, an accused in the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy case, from the United States.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left Front on Monday slammed the Group of Ministers on the Bhopal gas issue for recommending that the government pick up the tab on payment of compensation to victims."The GoM report has disappointed the people," BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain said. Communist Party of India - Marxist leader Nilotpal Basu told PTI, "It is unfair that the taxpayer has to pick up the compensation bill."
The Bharatiya Janata Party has sought an un-conditional apology from the Congress for misleading the country on the facts of Bhopal gas tragedy. Worse, the party said, the Congress is dubbing anyone who spoke against former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi as "anti-national and unpatriotic.
A top aide of Rajiv Gandhi spoke in contradictory voices about the Bhopal gas tragedy, first ruling out the late prime minister's involvement in the sudden release of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson and later hinting that he may have had a role.
Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily on Saturday attacked a top aide of Rajiv Gandhi for suggesting that the then prime minister may have had a role in the release of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson accused in Bhopal gas case, saying he was a new convert to the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena camp.
Thirty-seven years and some three generations later, the darkness of that night when 40 tonnes of lethal methyl isocyanate leaked out of the Union Carbide plant hangs like an impenetrable cloud over the lives of untold thousands, including children as young as three whose parents were exposed to the toxin when they themselves were children.
Picking holes in the statement of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Arjun Singh on Union Carbide Corporation CEO Warren Anderson's exit from India after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Bharatiya Janata Party asked the government and Congress to come clear on the issue on Thursday.
The government on Thursday said there were no records of calls made by home ministry officials before the exit of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson from India in December, 1984 and on the 'safe passage' assurance reportedly given to him. A day after Congress leader Arjun Singh sought to point fingers at P V Narasimha Rao for the exit of Anderson, an accused in the Bhopal gas disaster case, Home Minister P Chidambaram also gave a clean chit to Rajiv Gandhi.
The United States said on Friday that it would "carefully evaluate" any request from India to bring to justice Warren Anderson, the former CEO of Union Carbide, who is wanted in a case related to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy that killed several thousands of people. "...if the government of India makes such a request of us, we will carefully evaluate it," State Department spokesman P J Crowley, told reporters in response to a question.
The world had lost an opportunity to know long-term toxic effects of Methyl Isocyanate which had leaked from the Union Carbide factory on the night of December 2, 1984, because government research agencies have lost track of a bulk of survivors, says Dinesh C Sharma.
India's premier technical institute, IIT-Bombay's golden jubilee celebrations -- to be held in New York from July 18 to 20 this year -- have stirred a hornet's nest. The reason is that Dow Chemicals is one of the main sponsors.
Dr Singh told media persons accompanying him on his way back home from Toronto that he did not raise the issue in his discussions with US President Barack Obama during his meeting with him on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit.
The Anderson issue showed no signs of abating on Friday with P V Narasimha Rao's son Ranga Rao suggesting that his father would not have taken a decision on his own about granting 'safe passage' to the Union Carbide chief a few days after the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
Saluting the people who saved scores of life, YRF announced this project on the same day that the tragedy struck Bhopal 37 years back.
This is how films that bring to life man-made industrial disasters should be made, says Prasanna D Zore.
The Congress jumped into action as it found former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's name was being dragged into the ongoing controversy over Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson's disappearance from the country in December 1984 after a gas leak from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal killed tens of thousands of people.
A 12-year-old Indian American activist tried to issue summons for Warren Anderson, former chief of Union Carbide over the deadliest 1984 gas disaster in Bhopal.
Deepak Kher was one of many volunteers who chipped in in the aftermath of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy which killed over thousands of people in one night, and damaged the future of many others. He recounts his experience on the tragic night and the days that followed.
About 1,000 alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have sent a petition to the directors of the seven premier government-owned engineering institutes urging them to ban Dow Chemicals, which acquired the Union Carbide plant in 2001, from any partnership or role in the premier institutes of the country. This comes soon after the company was forced to cancel pre-placement talks, due in the last week of October, in IIT Madras and Bombay.
