The Supreme Court gave one more opportunity to the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh government to finalise the proposal for cleaning and disposing of the toxic waste lying around the defunct Union Carbide plant in Bhopal for the last 28 years, on Friday. A Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadhaya gave them three weeks for finalising the proposal and said, “If it doesn't happen we will close the case with the observation that neither the Centre nor the Madhya Pradesh government is interested in disposal of waste.”
Senior counsel Ravi Shankar Prasad, appearing for the Madhya Pradesh government told the Bench that a German company, GIZ, was willing to dispose of the 350 MT waste and the State had asked for some details about how much it would cost . He said the State wanted to tread with caution as it did not want some PIL to be filed later for selecting the German company.
On behalf of the Centre, Solicitor General Rohinton Nariman said the Cabinet had approved the State Government’s decision .
The Madhya Pradesh government wanted to send the waste abroad to be incinerated, as none of the Indian incinerators were competent enough. It stated that if it were done in India it would cause another mass poisoning.
