Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Thursday asked the state government to submit a plan for disposing of 900 metric tonnes (MT) of ashes generated from the incineration of 350 MT of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) waste at Pithampur. The directive was issued by the division bench of Justices Atul Shreedharan and Anuradha Shukla.
The court had summoned the technical officers of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board (MPPCB) for technical information regarding the disposal of toxic waste.
Rachna Dhingra of Bhopal Group of Information and Action (BGIA), an organisation working with Bhopal gas tragedy survivors, said, “NEERI, MPPCB, and CPCB could not answer why 900 MT of toxic ash is being dumped near the human population after burning 350 MT of toxic waste of UCC.
The technical officers could not even answer that the amount of mercury in the waste was very high. If that mercury did not go into the air and was not found in their toxic ash, then where did the mercury go?”
She added, “The BGIA also told the court that just like the toxic waste of American company Unilever lying in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, was sent to America in 2003 by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board under the polluter pays principle policy, this 900 MT ash should be sent to America. The BGIA has requested to add two new independent technical experts, who the court will hear at the next hearing.”
