Bhopal's wasteland

• Environment

February 24, 2015

Buried hazardous waste from the union carbide plant has seeped into drinking water sources, debilitating the lives of people there. Will incineration finally close this sad chapter?

By Rakesh Dixit

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Thirty years after the world’s worst industrial disaster took place in Bhopal, buried toxic waste from the Union Carbide plant is still creating havoc in the lives of people living around the plant. Lethal cyanide gas killed thousands and maimed lakhs on December 2, 1984. Even today, more than 50,000 people around the killer factory continue to drink water that has been poisoned by the hazardous waste.

This was found out in July 2004, when a voluntary organization moved a PIL in the Madhya Pradesh High Court after soil sample tests carried out in and around the closed Union Carbide plant revealed air and water pollution due to 350 tons of buried toxic waste. The waste can be found in pits in some 21 locations within the 68-acre site and also buried in wasteland outside. But despite petitions from the state government and NGOs, little was done to remove it.

INCINERATION TRIALS

However, nine years and several U-turns later, a 2005 order of the MP High Court to incinerate the waste at Pithampur industrial area in Dhar district of MP has finally been accepted by the center and the state government. However, doubts persist as to when the incineration will begin. RA Khandelwal, commissioner, Bhopal Gas Tragedy, Relief and Rehabilitation Department, says the Supreme Court (SC) had in April 2014 ordered that 10 tons be incinerated at Pithampur on a trial basis. “However, due to technical glitches in the incinerator, the waste has not been sent to Pithampur,” he says.

“If the trial run goes through successfully, the remaining waste can then be incinerated over the next five weeks or so,” says Pravir Krishn, principal secretary, Bhopal gas relief and rehabilitation. A Mumbai firm has been tied up for this project at an estimated cost of Rs. 110 crore.

NGOs working among the survivors are skeptical about the government’s plan and anguished over the delay. “Why were so many years wasted in court wrangling?” asks Abdul Jabbar, convenor, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan. “For people near the factory, the tragedy isn’t over as yet, as they still face air and water pollution from the hazardous waste lying there,” he rues.
The flip-flop over disposing off the waste began in 2004. That’s when the MP High Court constituted a task force to make recommendations on its disposal after a petition was filed by Alok Pratap Singh, an activist. In June 2005, MP tasked Ramky Enviro Engineering at Pithampur to burn the waste.

STIFF OPPOSITION

But the move faced stiff opposition from NGOs, which claimed that waste disposal at the incinerator would harm Pithampur’s people and its environment. Even BJP leaders such as former union minister Vikram Varma and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan lent their support.

Subsequently, the high court amended the order, asking the state government to dispose of the waste at Gujarat’s Ankleshwar incinerator. This was resisted by NGOs from Gujarat. The then Narendra Modi government petitioned the apex court to review the decision. MP too moved the SC in August 2008. In October 2009, the task force took another U-turn and decided to recommend incineration at Pithampur.

The SC upheld this in its order in January 2010. However, protests again erupted in Pithampur, forcing the MP government to write to the center in August 2010 to reconsider the decision. The center, in turn, moved the MP High Court, seeking directions to incinerate the waste at a Nagpur facility of the Defense Research and Deve-lopment Organization. The court agreed.

But yet again, protests erupted, this time from the Vidarbha Environmental Action Group. The NGO managed to get a stay from the Mumbai high court in July 2011. To break the impasse, officials of the pollution control boards of MP and Maharashtra agreed that Pithampur would be the incineration site.

Meanwhile, a German company, GEZ, evinced interest in destroying the toxic waste in Hamburg. The center took this proposal to the SC for approval. It directed the MP government to send the waste to Germany in April 2012, only to revert the order following withdrawal of the offer by GEZ because of opposition to this in Germany.

In October 2012, a group of ministers (GoM), headed by then FINANCEminister P Chidambaram, once again decided that the waste would be destroyed at Pithampur. The GoM earmarked `315 crore for the project. The SC finally approved the GoM decision in April this year.

INSENSITIVE COURTS

“The courts have not been sensitive to the plight of the gas tragedy victims. Let us hope more judicial flip-flop will not happen,” Jabbar says. “There is a very high prevalence of anaemia, delayed menarches in girls and painful skin conditions. But what is most pronounced is the number of children with birth defects,” says activist Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Medical Appeal, which runs a clinic for gas victims.

While those directly affected receive free medical health care, activists say authorities have failed to support those sick from drinking the contaminated water. Baskut Tuncak, UN special rapporteur on human rights and toxic waste, said in a statement recently: “New victims of the Bhopal disaster are born every day, and suffer life-long from adverse health impacts.”

Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), says the waste dumped by Union Carbide is a serious problem and needs to be dealt with urgently. CSE had, in 2009, taken samples from around the factory site and found that it contained chlorinated benzene compounds and organochlorine pesticides 561 times above the national standard. The chemicals from within the site matched those in the drinking water in colonies outside, the report said.
Seventeen people living around the plant had also filed a petition in US courts to get Union Carbide to bear the cost of the clean-up.

However, a New York court in August this year struck down this case, ruling in favor of Union Carbide Corporation, saying the company could not be sued for ongoing contamination from the chemical plant.
Justice is not easy to come by.

XAM SCAM MeeMeet the whistleblowers who shook Madhya Pradesh, and now fear for their lives

EXAM SCAM

Meet the whistleblowers who shook Madhya Pradesh, and now fear for their lives

The governor resigned on Wednesday after being booked in a huge exam scam that is now inching ominously close to the chief minister.

Rakesh Dixit 
Yesterday · 08:45 am

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Photo Credit: IANS

Three whistle-blowers who helped the police unravel a huge multi-billion-rupee exam and recruitment scam in Madhya Pradesh have said that their lives are in danger in the state and that they need the protection of central security agents.

The scam relates to the state’s Professional Examination Board, which is responsible for conducting tests for admission into the state’s medical colleges and for recruitment to government departments. The police investigation has implicated officials and politicians, and is now inching ominously close to the Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

On Wednesday, at the behest of the union home ministry, the state’s governor, Ram Naresh Yadav, resigned after a special task force named him in a first information report relating to the scam, alleging that he was involved in irregularities in the recruitment of forest guards. They booked him under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 420, which relates to cheating. Yadav’s son, Shailesh, had already been named in a chargesheet that the special task force investigating the scam had filed on February 9. Yadav is possibly the first Indian governor to be booked in a cheating case.

Over the past week, the otherwise fractious Opposition Congress closed ranks to vociferously demand that Chouhan and Yadav resign for their alleged roles in the scam.

The whistle-blowers — doctor Anand Rai, computer security expert Prashant Pandey and right-to-information activist Ashish Chaturvedi — say their lives are in danger. The three men, who provided vital information to the police last year, say they have lost faith in the state police, whom they claim are trying to frame them.

The state home minister, Babulal Gaur, promised to ensure full security to the whistle-blowers. “If any of the whistle-blowers has any problems with the police, they should come to me,” he told Scroll.in “If Mr Rai had come to me I would have increased his security. If Ashish is being tortured by the guards we have provided him, he should come to me. I will appoint others in their place.”

Whistle-blower 1

Pandey is perhaps the most vulnerable because insiders say he was the one who supplied crucial information to Congress leader Digvijay Singh that might implicate Chouhan. The information includes a spreadsheet containing the various requests made to bypass rules in the exam board and the corresponding names of the people who made the requests. Chouhan’s name figures four dozen times in that spreadsheet, Singh alleged at a press conference addressed by several Congress leaders on February 16.

This is the original spreadsheet that was recovered from the hard disk of the exam board’s former systems analyst, Nitin Mahindra, who is in jail for his alleged role in the scam. Chouhan had tampered with this spreadsheet by deleting his name in all instances and inserting those of others, including union minister and former state chief minister Uma Bharati, Singh alleged.

On February 24, Singh also submitted to the Special Task Force a soft copy of the spreadsheet and details of mobile calls allegedly made by the chief minister's wife to exam board officials. Singh has also submitted an affidavit to the Special Investigation Team that is supervising the STF, saying that the chief minister was free to take legal action against him if the allegations are proved to be incorrect.

Two days after the Congress leaders’ joint press conference in Bhopal, Pandey received a call from a state intelligence agency official at his house in New Delhi. “He asked me several questions,” Pandey told the Bhopal-based newspaper, Nav Dunia. “I felt some people were following me and tapping my phone. I was scared. I immediately decided to move the Delhi High Court for protection.” The next day, the Delhi High Court accepted Pandey's plea for protection against possible retribution, and directed the Madhya Pradesh police not to arrest Pandey in connection with a case they had lodged against him last year.

In August, the Bhopal police had arrested Pandey and a friend from a city hotel. They accused him of accessing various devices and laptops without authorisation. They lodged a criminal case against him under several sections of the IT Act and section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, which relates to forgery. Pandey obtained bail and fled to Delhi. The police again started hounding him following the Congress leaders’ press conference, he told the newspaper.

Until July last year, however, Pandey was considered a great friend of the special task force and the state police. He was then helping investigators retrieve the data from the hard drives of the exam board officials’ computers.

Then on July 21, Congress leader KK Mishra from Indore, who is from Prashant’s hometown, made public details of calls that the chief minister’s wife, Shadhna Singh, and his staffers allegedly made to exam board officials. The police concluded that Pandey had selectively leaked some of the retrieved data to KK Mishra. The whistle-blower immediately came under police surveillance.

“It is misleading to say that I leaked documents related to the PEB,” Pandey told journalists, the Hindi newspaper reported. “I am helping Digvijay Singh only in technical matters. Whatever documents I have, I will produce before the Delhi High Court in the next hearing.”

Meanwhile, the state government’s public relations department has circulated a note to journalists alleging that Pandey is a fraud and a blackmailer.

Whistle-blower 2

Anand Rai, another whistle-blower, said the police were denying him security, accusing him of being a criminal. Rai was provided one guard on the directive of the state high court last year.

“When I moved the high court, the government opposed my plea at every stage, saying I was a habitual criminal, although I am a government doctor. They eventually agreed to provide me one guard,” he said to the Hindustan Times last week. Rai alleged that the police and STF were hostile to the whistle-blowers because the chief minister was directly involved in the scam.

Four years ago, Rai came into the limelight for exposing unethical drug trials involving doctors in medical colleges and hospitals in Bhopal and Indore. His crusade led to the government of India tightening norms for conducting drug trials. Some of the doctors were fined, others were suspended, and still others face inquiries by their departments.

In July, Rai, who was suspended from a government medial college in Indore following his campaign against drug trials, tipped off the police about the presence of a large number of exam impersonators in different hotels in Indore. The city crime branch conducted raids and arrested four of them. Later, when the police questioned them, they revealed that they were working for Jagdish Sagar, a doctor who is the kingpin of the racket.

Whistle-blower 3

Ashish Chaturvedi, the third whistle-blower, who lives in Gwalior, has already suffered two attacks and an abduction bid even as the lone policeman who was supposed to guard him looked the other way.

Chaturvedi told journalists on February 24 in Bhopal that security men had roughed him up in January when he had gone to the exam board office in connection with RTI applications that he had filed regarding the scam. Chaturvedi immediately lodged a complaint with the local police.

"Everyone knows that my life is in danger after I blew the lid off the scam,” he said. “With this kind of a guard, I do not know what will happen if someone attacks me again," he said.

The Bhopal police denied Chaturvedi’s claim that he had been roughed up. "He was stopped at the gate [of the exam board office] and the security personnel asked him for his address and name for  the visitors' book,” inspector Brajesh Bhargav of the Nagar Town police station said in a press release. “But this angered him so much that he started abusing the security personnel.”

Chaturvedi told journalists that exam board officials were hostile to him because he files RTI applications. "Whenever I visit the office to file an application, officials object. They accept my application every time as they do not have an option. But they tell me that they are not happy with me for filing RTI applications regularly."

According to Chaturvedi, two attempts on his life have been made in Gwalior ever since he lodged an FIR in July against Gulab Singh Kirar, who is allegedly involved in the scam. Chaturvedi was also assaulted by two youngsters in Gwalior on January 1. The youths alleged that he was teasing girls in a local market and started beating him. His guard remained a mute spectator, Chaturvedi claimed.

He wrote to the police saying there was a threat to his life from 30 people, and the police had booked these people, he said. He has written to the state human rights commission and requested the special investigation team monitoring the probe by the special task force to deploy central security forces to guard him.

Shivraj's acid test in the PEB scam

EXAM SCAM

Why BJP chief minister Chouhan faces the biggest crisis of his career

With Congress leaders attempting to implicate him in a huge exam fraud, Shivraj Chouhan has become vulnerable to pressure from Modi, an old rival.

Rakesh Dixit 
Feb 18, 2015 · 07:00 am

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Photo Credit: IANS

Less than two years ago, Madhya Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was gloating about the disintegration of the Congress in his state. But this week, he has reason to fear a show of unity by the party's leaders.

Congress parliamentarians Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia, the state party chief Arun Yadav, leader of the opposition in the assembly Satya Deo Katare and member Suresh Pachori held a joint press meet, a rare occurrence, on February 16. At the meet, they accused the chief minister of  tampering with evidence to save his skin in a multi-billion-rupee scam involving the state's Professional Examination Board.

This board is responsible for conducting tests for admission into the state’s medical colleges and for recruitment to government departments. The scam surfaced in July 2013, when the Indore police arrested a doctor suspected of taking money from candidates in return for arranging for supposedly better-prepared impersonators to take the tests. The scam also involves other irregularities, such as manipulating the seating arrangement.

The Congress leaders alleged that the chief minister had manipulated data in an Excel spreadsheet on the hard disk belonging to the board's system analyst, Nitin Mahindra, who is also a suspect. The original spreadsheet had the name 'Shivraj Singh' in 48 places but these had been deleted, they claimed.

The scam

The police has registered more than 150 First Information Reports related to the scam. Hundreds of medical students and middlemen who colluded with officials in the board are in jail, but hundreds of others are absconding.

Among those in jail are a former minister, the minister's officer on special duty, the governor Ram Narsh Yadav's officer on special duty, two senior BJP leaders, a senior bureaucrat's husband, a senior police officer's brother, a Congress leader  and dozens of  parents who paid money to middlemen to  get their children fraudulently admitted into medical colleges or placed in government jobs.

The scam is still unravelling, with more cases of fraud continuing to surface. Most of these were allegedly executed by Pankaj Trivedi, the board's exam controller, and its system analyst Nitin Mahindra, acting on recommendations from politicians and their aides or middlemen with whom the duo had struck deals. The duo would apparently enter names of such recommenders in spreadsheets. It is with one of these that the chief minister has tampered, the Congress leaders alleged.

Strong denial

The chief minister denied the Congress's allegations and has threatened to sue Singh for spreading "canards" against him. Singh, who has been vigorously pursuing the scam in and out of the courts for more than a year, has dared the chief minister to arrest him if the allegations are incorrect. He has even filed an affidavit before the special investigation team, saying he was prepared to be arrested if his accusation was proven wrong.

The SIT was recently appointed by the Madhya Pradesh High Court Chief Justice AM Khanwilkar to monitor progress of the investigation being conducted by the state government-appointed special task force. Singh had pleaded with the chief justice to order a CBI inquiry.

But the chief justice ruled that the task force was doing a fine job and no other probe was required. The Congress considers his rejection of a CBI probe a big blow to the investigation. Over the past year, the party's leaders have therefore undertaken protests and fasts, courted arrest and called for bandhs to push for a CBI inquiry.

"We are deeply disappointed by the high court’s verdict," said Singh. "How can the task force, which works directly under the state government, fairly probe charges against the chief minister? We demand that he step down to pave way for free and fair investigation."

The BJP says the Congress must honour the court's verdict and let the task force work without pressure. BJP spokesman and senior minister Narottam Mishra points out that Singh is levelling baseless allegations out of frustration because he had employed a battery of senior lawyers to argue in the high court and the Supreme Court for a CBI probe,  but that has proven futile. Mishra claimed that the original spreadsheet was with the task force and it has handed it over to the SIT.

Cause for worry

Despite the denials, the chief minister is rattled because, for the first time, the Congress has alleged that he is directly involved in the scam and that he tampered with the evidence. At the press conference, senior lawyers KTS Tulsi and Vivek Tankha, who appeared on behalf of Singh, reiterated the Congress leaders' allegations against the chief minister.

Chouhan’s main worry is that if this scam gets publicity through the national media, the Supreme Court might take suo motu cognisance and order a CBI probe, according to sources in the BJP. He dreads the possibility of this scam harming his image the way the multi-crore Saradha scam did to that of his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee after the Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into the chit fund fraud.

If the CBI probes the examination scam, Chouhan will become vulnerable vis-à-vis Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Although Chouhan has cautiously avoided antagonising Modi so far, the perception endures that there is a rivalry between the two men. Chouhan is seen as being in the LK Advani-Sushma Swaraj camp, which won't endear him with the prime minister.

On Monday, Chouhan was nervously keeping a tab on developments relating to the scam. The state government’s public relations machinery was in overdrive to ensure that the joint press meet did not get wide coverage. But these attempts failed and the story was splashed in media outlets across the country, deepening the crisis in Madhya Pradesh.

MP chief minister-governor sailing in same scam boat

Why BJP chief minister in Madhya Pradesh has made common cause with governor

The two are involved in a multi-billion-rupee exam board scam, say Congress leaders in the state.

Rakesh Dixit 

Photo Credit: AFP/STR

Despite their antagonistic political affiliations, Madhya Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, 56, and governor Ram Naresh Yadav, 88, a former Congressman from Uttar Pradesh, have always enjoyed a good rapport with each other. This week their bonding intensified as the Opposition began calling for both to resign, alleging that they were involved in a huge exam scam.

On Wednesday, the Congress, the main Opposition party, boycotted the governor’s inaugural address in the assembly on the first day of its budget session. Later, Congress legislators demanded that the chief minister and the governor resign, which BJP members claimed was an unconstitutional demand. Amid the din, the speaker adjourned the house.

On the same day, the local media reported that a special investigation team had recommended last week to the high court that the governor be made an accused in the scam. The team has been appointed by the high court to monitor the probe into a scam involving the Professional Exam Board. The probe is being conducted by a special task force. This board is responsible for conducting tests for admission into the state’s medical colleges and for recruitment to government departments.

The scam surfaced in July 2013, when the Indore police arrested a doctor suspected of taking money from candidates in return for arranging for supposedly better-prepared impersonators to take the tests. The scam also involves other irregularities, such as manipulating the seating arrangement. The Chief Justice of the Jabalpur High Court, A M Khanwilkar, will now have decide what to do with the SIT’s report.

The chief minister and governor responded to the attacks as if in one voice. “Resigning under pressure is out of the question,” the governor told Dainik Bhaskar. “The governor’s post is constitutional. For any action against a governor, the president’s approval is mandatory.”

In the assembly, the chief minister said: “The Congress has no right to seek his resignation based on mere allegations.”

Under pressure

The Congress’s calls for the governor to resign follows a rare show of unity by its leaders, who held a joint press conference on February 16 at which they accused the chief minister of tampering with evidence to save his skin and asked him to resign. They alleged that the chief minister had manipulated data in an Excel spreadsheet with the names of those involved in the scam. The original spreadsheet had the name 'Shivraj Singh' in 48 places but these had been deleted, they claimed. The spreadsheet had been recovered from the hard disk of the exam board’s former systems analyst, Nitin Mahindra, who is in jail for his alleged role in the scam.

The press meet was addressed jointly by Congress parliamentarians Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia, the state party chief Arun Yadav, leader of the opposition in the assembly Satya Deo Katare and member Suresh Pachori.

They had not named the governor at the press meet, but two days later, in the assembly, called upon him also to resign because they claimed he hid the fact that his son, Shailesh, and his personal assistant had both taken money in the Raj Bhavan premises to get candidates in a government recruitment test cleared fraudulently.

Shailesh’s name figured in the chargesheet filed by the special task force on February 9 in the chief judicial magistrate court in Bhopal in connection with recruitment of contract teachers through the exam board. One of the touts arrested in the case had revealed that he had handed over a list of 10 candidates with Rs 3 lakh to Shailesh in the Raj Bhavan, the chargesheet says. Subsequently, the task force sent a notice to the Raj Bhavan address asking Shailesh to depose before it, but security officers declined to accept it.

When the special investigation team head Justice Chandresh Bhushan learnt about the Raj Bhavan’s refusal to accept the notice, he directed that it be sent to Shailsh’s permanent address in Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. He also said that if the accused did not cooperate and there was enough evidence against him, he should be arrested. The governor’s officer on special duty, Dhanraj Yadav, is already in jail charged with taking money for getting bogus candidates appointed as contract teachers.

In view of the possible involvement of the governor’s son and personal assistant in the scam, the SIT has recommended to the high court that the governor be made a co-accused under Section 120 (B) of the Indian Penal Code. This section provides for equal punishment to the co-accused for entering into a criminal conspiracy with the accused. The SIT is of the view that the governor was aware of the misdeeds of his son and personal assistant yet did not act against them.

“The manner in which my son’s name is being dragged into the scam is a part of petty politics,” the governor told Dainik Bhaskar. But the arrest of his officer on special duty and the possible involvement of his son in the scam has shaken Yadav, who is already ailing.

In the assembly, the chief minister did not say anything about the governor’s son. His former personal assistant is accused in the scam but is absconding.

Old friends

The Congress has been unhappy about the governor’s closeness to the chief minister ever since he took office, in September 2011. “He has seldom acted on memoranda that we have submitted to him over the years against the omissions and commissions of the state government,” said a senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be named.

He recalled that the governor had embarrassed the party during a trust vote in the state assembly two years ago by allowing the deputy leader of the Congress Opposition to defect to the BJP.

“The startling revelations in the scam explain why the governor has been so generous towards the chief minister,” the Congressman said.

The chief minister has reciprocated the governor’s generosity. When the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the Centre in May, people thought that Yadav, like other governors appointed by the previous Congress-led regime would be asked to vacate the Raj Bhavan. But those familiar with the matter say that the chief minister prevailed upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allow Yadav to stay. His term ends on September 2016. After Modi was sworn in, Yadav was quick to congratulate him with a bouquet.

Nevertheless, the governor had almost made up his mind to resign following a 30-minute meeting with union minister Uma Bharti on February 17, said sources in the BJP. Media reports speculated that she had gone there to communicate home minister Rajnath Singh’s desire that Yadav step down.

Uma Bharti is maintaining an uncharacteristic silence over the issue, perhaps because her name has also cropped up in the scam. But the Congress alleges that the chief minister had his name replaced with Uma Bharti’s in the incriminating spreadsheet.

But the next day, the governor was back in a defiant mood, apparently after being assured that the chief minister and the BJP would back him to the hilt.