Bhopal settlement still on hold

Not a dollar of the $470 million settlement agreed to last February by Union Carbide and the Indian government has yet been paid out to any of the victims of the 1984 methyl isocyanate disaster in Bhopal. The money, plus an estimated $35 million in accumulated interest since then, remains frozen in the State Bank of India because of petitions India's Supreme Court has agreed to consider from activist lawyers. No resolution is expected until after November's national election. The delay rises from charges by public interest groups and most of India's press that the Indian government essentially sold out the victims when it agreed to the settlement engineered by the Indian Supreme Court. They believe the Indian government duped it into a premature settlement order and claim that the figure failed to include long-term medical care and monitoring. The petitions mainly involve, first, the constitutionality of the Bhopal Claims Act, which gave the government ...