While controversy rages over the method and agency to be involved in clearing up the stockpile of toxic waste lying inside the abandoned Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, the hazardous material continues to pollute ground water on a massive scale as the soil inside the factory premises, particularly in its northern and north-eastern side, remains contaminated by toxic chemicals.

Till Friday evening, even 24-hours after registering an FIR on the charge of murder and attempt to murder against the relatives of Madhya Pradesh health minister Anup Mishra, the Gwalior police had not arrested any one. The FIR was registered on Thursday after one person had died and half a dozen others were injured in indiscriminate firing over a piece of land adjoining a private college on the outskirts of Gwalior.

Ten people, some of them women, were killed and as many injured in a road accident in the neighbouring Raisen district, police said on Thursday.

The Madhya Pradesh government will take steps to appeal against the Supreme Court judgment, which diluted the charge in the criminal case arising out of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster.

A year after the 1984 gas disaster, the US multinational Union Carbide Corporation had launched a full-fledged propaganda to project that “evidence was overwhelming to prove that the tragedy at Bhopal was an act of employee sabotage” but both UCC and its subsidiary Union Carbide (eastern), Hong Kong, [now renamed as Union Carbide Asia Pacific Inc. and Union Carbide Asia Ltd.] failed to appear in the chief judicial magistrate’s court here and face trial on the basis of firm evidence.

Seven organisations, working for the rights of the survivors’ of Bhopal gas disaster, have strongly condemned the recommendations of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Bhopal.

Yet another tigress, eight-year-old Shweta, died at the Van Vihar National Park in the state capital early Tuesday morning. With this casualty, the death toll of tigresses has gone up to three in this prestigious national park within a year.

The NGOs working for the cause of the gas victims have expressed serious reservations about the recommendations of the Group of Ministers on various issues linked with Bhopal gas tragedy that include enhanced compensation to the gas victims and the families of those killed in the worst industrial catastrophe that hit Bhopal in December 1984.

The chairman of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s minorities’ front Tanveer Ahmed said here on Sunday that the Congress party has “acquired the distinction” of protecting the merchants of death (those resp

Ever since the Supreme Court approved the $470-million out-of-court settlement of compensation with Union Carbide Corporation in February 1989, hundreds of thousand gas affected citizens in Bhopal have continuously felt that they have been cheated because of the meagre compensation awarded to them and also since the multinational company has not been held accountable on the criminal liability front even quarter of a century after the gas disaster.