In a little more than a week’s time, a historic opportunity to get the Union Carbide Corporation to clean up the soil and water in its abandoned factory in Bhopal may slip by. But even as the deadline set by a New York court approaches, two ministries in India are still sorting out the bureaucratic issue of who wil write the letter to clinch the issue. In March this year, the New York Federal Court had said that it could direct Union Carbide to clean up the factory ravaged by the gas leak of 1984. The only catch was that since the plant was in the Indian territory, the Indian Government would have to send a No Objection Certificate by June 30. The day is fast approaching. Bhopal activists have been on hunger strike for four days and Greenpeace members have been lobbying with government officials here for the letter. Today, after intervention from the PMO, Law Minister H R Bharadwaj, whose ministry was expected to sign the letter, finally agreed to meet the activists. But he said that it was not up to his ministry to send the letter ‘‘since it was an environmental matter’’. He promised to get in touch with officials from the Ministry of Environment, saying it was up to them to issue the letter. Now, the Ministry of Environment is waiting for directions from the Law Ministry to get down to actually writing the note. The matter seems simple but the Central Government seems to be confusing it with the Gas leak gas. Greenpeace stressed that the environmental contamination case in the US courts has nothing to do with the Bhopal gas leak case and is, therefore, not covered by the Bhopal Claims Act of 1989 settled in the Supreme Court. Ironically, Bharadwaj was part of the committee that dealt with the final settlement of the gas leak case. The Union Carbide was sold to Dow Chemicals in the US but the plant site is owned by the Government of Madhya Pradesh. That is why the US Courts need a letter from India before they direct the company to clean up the plant. The state Government sent a letter on June 7 urging the Central government to send the NOC. ‘‘It is in the public interest that the toxic waste is from the site is removed and disposed of at the earliest,’’ urged the letter by principal secretary, Government of Madhya Pradesh. The toxins lying on the site would require a clean-up operation that could cost millions. A 1999 report found substantial and severe contamination of land and drinking water supplies with heavy metal and persistent organic contaminants both within the plant and the surrounding areas. While the Bhopal Gas leak disaster was settled by an order of the Supreme Court in 1989, the issue of soil and water contamination has not been addressed so far. By the ‘‘polluter pays principle’’ in the Indian environmental law as well as the US, the company will have to pay for the clean-up. But only if the Indian Government gets its act together in time.
