No ministerial connivance on Anderson: Soni

NEW DELHI - No central minister had connived to ensure that former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson left the country four days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the world’s worst industrial disaster, the government asserted Thursday.

“There is no conclusive evidence to show that any central minister had a role to play in Anderson leaving the country,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters here.

“The very fact that a group of ministers on the Bhopal gas tragedy has been reconstituted shows how serious the government is on the issue. The law minister has also spoken on the issue without delay. Let the committee give its report and we will see how to move forward,” she added.

The committee would, among other things, study the implications of a Bhopal court’s judgment Monday sentencing to two years imprisonment seven people, including Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of Union Carbide India, when the Dec 2-3, 1984 gas tragedy occurred.

The sentence has sparked outrage among activists and other Indian citizens for being too little too late.

Soni, however, refused to comment on a statement by Congress leader Digvijay Singh that Anderson had been permitted to go scot-free under US pressure.

“I would not like to comment on that,” she said.

Anderson was arrested Dec 7, 1984 but was immediately granted bail by a Bhopal court. He was thereafter flown in a state government aircraft to New Delhi from where he boarded a flight out of the country.

On Thursday, a former director of aviation at Bhopal and a pilot both claimed that the Madhya Pradesh chief minister’s office had instructed them to fly Anderson to Delhi.

“We got a call from the chief minister’s office and were asked to arrange a flight,” former director of aviation, Bhopal, R.S. Sodhi told NDTV news channel. Senior Congress leader Arjun Singh was then the Madhya Pradesh chief minister and wielded considerable clout in the Congress, both at the centre and in the state.

At the time of the Bhopal gas tragedy, Digvijay Singh was the agriculture minister in Arjun Singh’s cabinet.

Digvijay Singh was elected to the Lok Sabha in December 1984 held in the wake of then prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination. He was the Madhya Pradesh chief minister 1993-2003.

Meanwhile, a fresh controversy erupted Thursday when it became known that Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the Congress spokesperson and a member of the Lok Sabha, had represented Dow Chemicals, which had purchased the parent Union Carbide company.

Singhvi, however, denied any wrongdoing or conflict of interest.

“I have no idea of this charge (conflict of interest), as you call it…it is laughable. This is an old case…it involves only the threshold legal question - whether Dow is same as, or even remotely related to - Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). For three-four years, these NGOs have been trying to prove Dow and UCIL are the same. Courts have not accepted this…the application is still pending,” he told NDTV news channel.

“I represent Dow Chemicals as a senior counsel, I don’t deal with them directly with them,” he said on the phone from Yale, where he is currently leading an Indian delegation.