Govt may clear Dow Chemicals path

The centre is all set to pave the way for Dow Chemicals to invest in India, by removing all “legal hurdles” related to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 22, 2007, 24:46:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The centre is all set to pave the way for Dow Chemicals to invest in India, by removing all “legal hurdles” related to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, one of the world’s biggest industrial disasters that claimed thousands of lives.

The Department of Industries has moved a Cabinet note asking the government to absolve Dow Chemicals of all legal liabilities. The Chemicals and Fertilizers Ministry had earlier filed an affidavit in the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking Rs 100 crore from the company as initial compensation.

The note provides for withdrawal of the affidavit and out-of-court settlement. It is based on the Law Ministry’s opinion that the government can opt to settle out of court with Dow Chemicals as the latter does not own the financial liabilities of Union Carbide, the main accused in the case. The Chemicals Ministry has opposed this view.

Dow Chemicals claims it is not liable to pay compensation because it did not inherit the liabilities of Union Carbide when it bought the company.

Magsaysay Award winner Sandeep Pandey, who is associated with the tragedy victims, described the move as cheating on the part of the government. “Allowing Dow Chemicals in India without paying the liabilities is a crime,” he said.

The government had sought the Law Ministry’s opinion after Dow Chemicals had expressed its wish to make huge investments in India, provided the legal hurdles were removed.

In April, the then Cabinet Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi had favoured settling the issue with Dow Chemicals “appropriately”. Even Ratan Tata had written to the Planning Commission and Finance Ministry earlier this year, recommending an out-of-court settlement.

The Tata group had even proposed a remediation fund to clean up 8,000 tonnes of waste at the tragedy site. Last year, four US senators and Dow Chemicals chief executive officer Andrew N. Livers had written to the Prime Minister seeking his intervention to settle the issue.

Within a year of these suggestions, the government has acted and the Cabinet will soon examine the proposal, a senior government functionary said.

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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