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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Bhopal case: Jairam 'sorry' govt smuggled Union Carbide waste by Suchandana Gupta

Bhopal case: Jairam 'sorry' govt smuggled Union Carbide waste by Suchandana Gupta

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published Published on Jul 11, 2010   modified Modified on Jul 11, 2010


As late as 2008, about 23 years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the state government was still involved in virtual subterfuge. Taking advantage of a curfew imposed in Indore, which was reeling under communal riots in July-August that year, the government smuggled out 40 tonnes of toxic waste from the Union Carbide factory to an incinerator 230 km away at a site in Pithampur.

Apologising for the government's action, Union minister of state for environment Jairam Ramesh admitted that the lethal waste was secretly smuggled out during the night hours from the Carbide factory and shifted it to a TSD (treatment, storage and disposal) incinerator facility in Pithampur, Dhar district. "I admit as minister that it was wrong to have brought those 40 tonnes of waste to Pithampur."

Whatever we do needs to be done with adequate transparency. I am ready to admit publicly that transporting that waste from the Union Carbide factory secretly during the night hours was wrong. Locals of Pithampur should have been taken into confidence," Ramesh said after visiting the TSD in Pithampur. He, however, brushed off any personal responsibility, saying he wasn't a Union minister at that time.

Ramesh's apology is in sharp contrast to what he had said during his first visit to Bhopal last year after joining the cabinet. He visited the Carbide site and told reporters that he had held the toxic waste in his hands and "was still alive".

The transfer of toxic waste was something NGOs in the area and residents of the Indore suburb always suspected. But the first confirmation came on Saturday. It's not clear if the waste was moved by the state authorities on instructions from the Centre or of its own will. But Babu Lal Gaur, the state minister responsible for victim rehab, said the act was within the legal and no law had been violated. He refused to provide details.

Following riots, the district administration had clamped curfew in the areas when the waste was brought to the incinerator without anybody's knowledge. The Carbide waste, nearly 350 tonnes of it, is an amalgam of deadly chemicals that the company had used to manufacture pesticide. Without a clear clean-up plan, it still sits at the site of the world's worst industrial disaster.

According to Ramesh, a meeting of the group of ministers on the gas tragedy rehabilitation has decided that the first phase of land remediation will involve toxic waste disposal. The deadline for this is December this year. Pithampur is one of the TSD facilities being considered for the incineration job.

Locals, however, are against such a move. Irate residents of Tarpura village, located 300 metres from the TSD plant, blocked a road and shouted angry slogans when Ramesh arrived on Saturday. The protesters argued that dumping the poisonous waste in Pithampur would endanger their survival. They demanded that the TSD facility be shut down.

Ramesh, who is the chairman of the oversight committee supervising remediation of land at the Union Carbide factory and gas tragedy affected areas, was on a two-day visit to Bhopal and Indore. After meeting the gas victims and NGOs on Friday, the minister went to Pithampur to check the safety angle in the TSD facility. After inspecting the plant, he apologised for the clandestine waste disposal of 2008 and assured that complete transparency would be maintained on Union Carbide waste removal.


The Times of India, 11 July, 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Bhopal-case-Jairam-sorry-govt-smuggled-Union-Carbide-waste-/articleshow/6152954.cms


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