India should intervene in US court: Bhopal gas victims’ lawyer

BHOPAL - The Indian government should intervene in the ongoing litigation against Union Carbide in a New York court, a lawyer representing the Bhopal gas victims in the case there said Thursday.

Reminding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about his assurance to clean up the plant site which is poisoning ground water in its vicinity, attorney Himanshu Rajan Sharma said the Indian government can take legal action to hold Union Carbide accountable, by directly intervening on behalf of the Madhya Pradesh government which owns the land and leased it to the firm.

The Bhopal gas leak took place on the night between Dec 2-3, 1984, when tonnes of methyl isocyanate spewed out of the Union Carbide pesticide plant, killing more than 3,500 people instantly and maiming thousands more.

Addressing a press conference here, Sharma said that since Union Carbide and its parent company, Dow Chemicals, refuses to submit to Indian courts’ jurisdiction in any of the cases and the New York federal court is the only one whose jurisdiction the company recognises, the Indian government’s intervention in this court would also be consistent with its earlier submission that the company should be liable for cleanup in accordance with the “Polluter Pays Principle”.

On the 10-year-long legal battle in the New York court, he said that the case has survived four dismissals and currently Union Carbide US has been asked to provide documents regarding its involvement with the Bhopal plant.

These documents clearly establish that the present-day environmental pollution problems are the consequences of managerial decisions taken at the design stage of the Bhopal plant by the American multinational, Sharma contended.

He emphasised that even after the Bhopal plant was closed after the disaster in December 1984, Union Carbide remained involved with the rehabilitation of the plant site till 1998 and approved the creation of a landfill in the area of the solar evaporation ponds.

Sharma said that he had recently met Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to convey the urgent need for intervention in the New York litigation and the later had assured him that this matter will be under active consideration. Sharma also plans to meet central government officials in this connection soon.