PM seeks GoM report on Bhopal tragedy within 10 days
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COMMENTS 
With questions being raised over the handling of the Bhopal gas tragedy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has directed the Group of Ministers to meet immediately and report to the Cabinet within 10 days
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked the Group of Ministers (GoM) to assess the options and remedies available to the government in light of the Bhopal court’s verdict in the gas tragedy case, and get back soon.
“The prime minister has directed that the GoM, headed by the home minister and constituted to look into all issues relating to the Bhopal gas disaster, may meet immediately to take stock of the situation arising out of the recent court judgment to assess the options and remedies available to the government on the various issues involved and to report to the Cabinet within 10 days,” a Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) spokesman said on June 14, 2010.
The reconstituted Group of Ministers on the Bhopal gas tragedy, headed by Home Minister P Chidambaram, has been given a vastly expanded mandate which includes “remediation measures” at the site of the 1984 disaster. Internal memos and letters suggest the inclusion of “remediation measures” originally came from Dow Chemical’s lobbying to escape liability, holding out promises of substantial investments in India.
Chidambaram and Kamal Nath, who were ministers for finance and commerce respectively, in 2006, had endorsed the proposal that would get Dow -- which now owns Union Carbide -- off the hook with regard to remediation, or a clean-up, of the contaminated site. Ironically, both ministers are part of the GoM, leading some NGOs to allege that their inclusion represents a “conflict of interest”.
Documents released by the PMO under the RTI Act show that in 2006-2007, both ministers recommended that a Site Remediation Trust be set up to let Indian corporates fund and implement remediation activities, leaving Dow free of any responsibility. This would send “an appropriate signal to Dow Chemical, which is exploring investing substantially in India, and to the American business community,” Nath said in a memo dated February 2007.
Chidambaram’s recommendation came in the wake of the Indo-US CEOs Forum meeting in October 2006, where Dow CEO Andrew Liveris wanted to discuss the issue. “I think we should accept this offer and constitute a Site Remediation Trust,” he said in his memo.
Following the two ministers’ notes, the Cabinet secretary, in April 2007, recommended that the existing Group of Ministers be reconstituted with appropriate changes in its mandate. Three years later, the government has accepted the recommendation to offer a wide mandate to the new GoM announced last week.
Senior government sources say that “the earlier GoM was only to coordinate and oversee disbursal of compensation under the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster Act, 1985, handling of funds, and final recommendation to the government on compensation… this is a much wider GoM.”
After Dow bought Union Carbide in 1999, it insisted that it had no legal liabilities in the Bhopal case. However, a 2005 PIL in the high court of Madhya Pradesh named Dow as a respondent. In the same case, the Government of India, also named a respondent, moved the court to demand that Dow deposit Rs 100 crore towards remediation costs.
Meanwhile, seeking justice for victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, survivors have started a signature campaign for a memorandum to be sent to US President Barack Obama.
“Your (Obama’s) tough stand against British Petroleum for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is worthy of emulation by other governments around the world, and the same yardstick should be applied to the Bhopal gas tragedy involving a US company,” the memorandum, scripted by the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan, an NGO working for victims of the disaster, said.
“Your order that the judicial process should be allowed, both in the US and India, to take its course in fixing the responsibility of Union Carbide Corporation and individuals of the US responsible for the Bhopal carnage, is crucial to restore the subverted system of justice,” it said.
In the memorandum, Obama has been asked to set in motion the process to make Dow Chemical (now the owner of US-based UCC) to take responsibility for its liabilities that include cleaning up the toxic mess that remains in the now defunct Union Carbide factory.
Source: Press Trust of India, June 14, 2010}
The Hindu, June 11, 2010