New Delhi:
From Dow Chemicals to Warren Anderson, the government will now begin a concerted effort to win justice and money for Bhopal, and to fix accountability for the industrial disaster that killed 20,000 residents of the city in 1984.
The Cabinet on Thursday accepted the recommendations of the Group of Ministers (GoM) appointed after a court verdict exposed how blatantly and frequently the government had let down Bhopal.
In 1984, a gas leak at a pesticide factory owned by Union Carbide poisoned the city. Twenty thousand people died. Thousands are crippled by the after-effects. Seven Indian executives of Carbide were sentenced earlier this month to two years in prison. They were granted bail immediately.
Public outrage and an Opposition onslaught saw the Prime Minister intervening. The GoM, headed by Home Minister P Chidambaram, was asked to find solutions for "remediation and rehabilitation." So the government will now ask the court to review its verdict. It will also ask the Supreme Court to consider reviewing a decision in 1996 that reduced the charges against Carbide executives to criminal negligence (they were originally charged with culpable homicide).
That mission statement has seen the government consent to higher financial compensation for the families of those who died, and for surviving victims.
The government will also begin a 300-crore clean-up of the defunct Carbide plant and the areas surrounding it, where hundreds of toxic waste are a health hazard. The sanitization, to be completed by December, will be funded by the Centre, and executed by the state. In court, the Centre will pursue a case that holds Dow responsible for the costs. Union Carbide was bought by Dow in 2001; since then, Dow has argued that it did not inherit any liability linked to Bhopal. Carbide settled its dues, Dow says, in a 470 million dollar package accepted by the government. It also states that the Indian interests of Carbide were sold to another Indian company named Eveready. The Madhya Pradesh High Court has been hearing the case since 2004. In 2005, the Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Ram Vilas Paswan, said that Dow should deposit 100 crores for the clean-up. Even as Dow contested that, the Law Ministry seconded the opinion that Dow could not unhinge itself from Carbide and the Bhopal tragedy.
Outside India, the government will push for America to extradite Warren Anderson, the American who was the CEO of Carbide at the time of the gas leak. Anderson visited India days after the tragedy, but was flown out of Bhopal on the chief minister's plane, even though, by this time, he had been charged with culpable homicide. The government now says that Anderson had promised to return to face trial. He has ignored a series of court summons.