The entire effort to artificially bury the Bhopal legacy is misguided. Unfortunately, the legacy lives on. Justice demands that it is brought to an honourable, dignified closure in a fair and transparent manner. The Group of Ministers has failed to do that, writes Praful Bidwai.
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 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 Group of Ministers on Bhopal gas tragedy is understood to have decided on Sunday to recommend filing of a curative petition in the Supreme Court to fix criminal liability, seek extradition of former Union Carbide Corp CEO Warren Anderson and cleaning up the complex by burying the toxic waste.
Government on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking enhancement of compensation from Rs 750 crore to Rs 7,700 crore for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy in which more than 5,000 people were killed due to leakage of poisonous gas from the Union Carbide factory.
The Madhya Pradesh chief minister's office has returned a Right To Information application seeking details of the escape of the then Union Carbide Corporation chairman Warren Anderson from India.The office returned the application of social activist S C Agrawal, claiming that there was no position of a 'central public information officer' in the office of the chief minister.
Senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani on Thursday night suggested that the government, instead of trying to bring back former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, should ensure action against those who had enabled him to leave India in 1984 after the Bhopal gas leak tragedy.
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 complaint has been filed in a local court here for registration of a criminal case against former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh for allegedly releasing the then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson in a wrong manner after the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
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.
The trial court in the Bhopal gas tragedy case has held the owners of the Union Carbide pesticide plant, the Indian government and 'to some extent' the government of Madhya Pradesh responsible for the magnitude of the disaster. "The problem was worsened by the plant's location near a densely populated area, non-existent catastrophe plans and shortcomings in health care and socio-economic rehabilitation," said the judgment delivered by Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari.
Amid strong public reaction to the judgement in the Union Carbide case, the government is understood to be looking at legal position to check if Carbide India's non executive Chairman Keshub Mahindra could be barred from taking directorship in any company.
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.
Amid questions over how the then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson fled India, the central government said on Thursday that the group of ministers set up on the Bhopal gas tragedy issue will look into all aspects related to the incident and facts would be presented before the nation.
After a trial lasting more than two decades, the judgement on Bhopal Gas tragedy, the world's worst industrial disaster which killed and maimed thousands of people, would be pronounced on Monday.
Victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy on Saturday held a demonstration protesting United States President Barack Obama's India visit and sought to know why he and his predecessors kept mum on the world's biggest industrial disaster.
Twenty-six years after one of the worst industrial disasters, Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which claimed thousands of lives occurred, a local court trying the case would pronounce its verdict on June 7.
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.
The change in ownership is expected to give a fresh lease of life to the company that has often been dragged by financial stress in its close to three-decade journey under the Khaitans, reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
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.
There's far too much to be said against Nuclear Liability Bill
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.
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.'
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