Victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, described as one of the world's worst-ever industrial disasters, have filed a Right to Information petition with the prime minister's office in New Delhi.The RTI plea wants to know whether the Central government took into consideration the disaster of gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal in 1984 while drafting the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill with the United States.
Dow Chemical Company is once bitten, twice shy. Close on the heels of its US parent's move to deny liability for damages resulting from the Bhopal gas tragedy at a plant run by Union Carbide (a company it had bought), Dow India has called off a greenfield project to establish a research & development facility in Maharashtra.
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.
Congress leader Arjun Singh finally broke his silence over the Bhopal gas tragedy on Wednesday during a rare appearance in the Rajya Sabha. The septuagenarian leader, who was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh when the Bhopal gas tragedy took place, arrived in a wheel chair soon after Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ravi Shankar Prasad initiated a discussion on the issue. "I felt that Union Carbide CEO) Warren Anderson should be arrested," he said.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday said a commission will be formed to look into all aspects of the Bhopal gas tragedy to ensure that the guilty are punished and victims get adequate compensation. He said his government will ensure that the truth comes to the fore. The victims have not received justice even after 25 years of the tragedy, Chouhan said. Chouhan said that since 1980, a number of industrial accidents took place in the factory.
Saturday will be the last time the Mumbai Mirror will hit newsstands as a daily. Two Saturdays ago, its owners, the Times of India group, shocked the city by deciding to convert the Mirror into a weekly newspaper. Jyoti Punwani salutes the Mirror and its editor, Meenal Baghel, for its pathbreaking journalism.
Former Union Carbide India chairman Keshub Mahindra and four others, who were convicted on June 7 in the Bhopal gas leak case, were on Tuesday granted bail by a local court. UCIL former managing director Vijay Gokhle, former vice president Kishore Kamdar, former works manager J Mukund and former production manager S P Choudhry were granted bail by Chief Judicial Magistrate R V Singh.
What is needed is dharma or good faith among both companies and officials to limit harm. Regulators should also remember that costs forced on companies become higher costs for consumers, says Gurcharan Das
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.
In the backdrop of outrage over the trial court's verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy, the government on Thursday announced a Rs 1265.56-crore package and decided to file a curative petition in Supreme Court, besides pushing for the extradition of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson. The Union Cabinet, which considered the report of the Group of Ministers on the 1984 disaster, accepted all its 22 recommendations, but did not fix liability on anybody.
If the Bhopal judgment results in independent directors and CEOs/plant managers waking up to their responsibilities, that can only be a good thing.
Former Union minister Vasant Sathe said on Tuesday that there was nothing wrong or illegal in giving safe passage to then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson and the Congress should not feel embarrassed about it.
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.
In the midst of the political storm over the Bhopal tragedy case verdict, the records of the trial court show that the Central Bureau of Investigation had sought the dilution of the stringent charges against Union Carbide Corporation's Chief Executive Officer Warren Anderson, on the lines of the relief given by the Supreme Court in the case against the Indian accused.
Despite the attempts made by the opposition to keep the Bhopal tragedy alive, the Congress leadership has made efforts to put a deliberate closure on the issue.
As the prime minister asked the Group of Ministers on Bhopal tragedy to meet immediately, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is a member of the GoM, said on Monday that the panel can probe under what circumstances the industrial disaster took place and how the punishment for the culprits was reduced.
Battling charges over escape of Warren Anderson days after the Bhopal tragedy, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday sought to give a new spin on the issue, saying Arjun Singh took the decision on then Union Carbide chief executive officer's exit keeping in view the law and order situation.
Former Union Minister Arun Nehru, a close aide of prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, claimed on Sunday that Arjun Singh as Madhya Pradesh chief minister had taken the decision to release then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson after the Bhopal tragedy and that Gandhi had no role in it.
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 attack over the escape of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson on Friday appeared to be zeroing in on the then Madhya Pradesh chief minister Arjun Singh, with Congress leaders Digvijay Singh and R K Dhawan demanding an answer from the veteran leader.
'Arjun Singh was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh back in 1984. He is still on Indian soil, and, presumably, available for questioning.'
Its been 25 years since the world's worst industrial and environment disaster ever -- the Bhopal gas tragedy -- claimed scores of lives. However, there seems to be no end to the victims' woes.
The team took cotton T-shirts and cut them into thin strips and dipped those white cotton strips into a black solution of boron.
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.
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 Union cabinet will discuss the report of the Group of Ministers on the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy on Thursday.
Senior Congress leader Arjun Singh, who is in the eye of a storm over the issue of safe passage given to the then Union Carbide Corporation chairman Warren Anderson in the wake of the Bhopal gas tragedy, has sought to lob the ball in the Centre's court and the party declined to join issue.
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.
"If I go there at all, I would be addressing the (US-India) CEOs meeting and also have some bilateral meetings with Treasury officials. I do not know of any other meeting. I do not know from where these things come," he told media persons in Ahmedabad when asked about reports about his plans to meet with Dow Chemicals CEO Andrew Liveris in the US.
Did the Indian government guarantee Dow Chemicals, the parent company of Union Carbide, that it will not be held liable for the Bhopal gas tragedy?
The reconstituted Group of Ministers on the Bhopal gas tragedy will meet on Friday, Home Minister P Chidambaram said on Tuesday, a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked the panel to submit its report to the Cabinet in 10 days.
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.
Just months before the deadly gas leak in Bhopal killed 15,000 people, journalist Rajkumar Keswani had warned that the 'city stood on the edge of a volcano'. He speaks of his 26-year battle to get justice for the victims.
Former Supreme Court Chief Justice A H Ahmadi, facing flak for the 1996 verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, said on Thursday that he had not committed any impropriety by agreeing to head a multi-million dollar trust set up by the Union Carbide after the gas leak. But another former CJI J S Verma felt Ahmadi should not have accepted the task. "It is a question of propriety in the public eye," Verma said observing personally he would like to keep away from anything related
With the circumstances under which Warren Anderson was flown out in a state plane after the gas disaster coming under scrutiny, a former Madhya Pradesh aviation official says he received a call from the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh's office to arrange for his departure.
The bullet has the capability to pierce a static bullet proof bunker used during counter-terrorism operations
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy, Madhya Pradesh government has decided to throw open for public the defunct Union carbide factory that claimed thousands of lives following leakage of toxic gases.
Photographer Samar Jodha's latest installation gives you a 3D experience of the Bhopal gas tragedy
India has an appalling record on industrial safety.
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