3 riders on toxic tub course

When the Supreme Court monitoring committee on hazardous waste meets in Delhi on January 20 to review its decision on not allowing toxic ship Clemenceau into India, observations made by the panel in February 2005 could influence the decision.

Published on: Jan 12, 2006, 02:26:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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When the Supreme Court monitoring committee on hazardous waste meets in Delhi on January 20 to review its decision on not allowing toxic ship Clemenceau into India, observations made by the panel in February 2005 could influence the decision.

The committee, in its observations on the ship, in February 2005 had sought three main requirements to allow entry of the ship into the country, including an inspection by a third party.

The committee had sought a report of the decontamination in Toulon, France, giving details of the actual quantity of asbestos removed, an independent third party audit verifying the report and a certificate from the French authorities that the ship does not violate the provisions of the Basel Convention.

Sources say, except for the decontamination report, the committee has not received any other document. "If we get the papers, we can decide whether to review the decision not to allow ship into the country," a member of the panel said.

The ministry of environment and forests has been asked to procure all relevant documents on the ship from the French embassy. The embassy had stated that the ship contains 45 tonnes of asbestos whereas Alang, the ship-breaking yard, can only handle 25 tonnes.

The committee is categorical that only if these conditions are met, would the ship be allowed in.

The panel has asked Ship Decommissioning Industrial Commission, the French company that decontaminated the ship, Greenpeace and the Indian firm that bought the ship to make a presentation before the committee on January 20.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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