Once shunned, areas near Bhopal gas tragedy site now seeing real estate boom

Four decades after the Bhopal gas tragedy, hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste remain on the premises of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). Despite multiple court orders and warnings, government authorities have not disposed of the waste safely, officials confirmed to The Hindu.

The Union government has released ₹126 crore to the Madhya Pradesh government to carry out plans to dispose of 337 MT of the toxic waste, which was collected and kept in the premises of the factory in 2005, documents show.

However, a 2010 government-commissioned study showed that, apart from this 337 MT of toxic waste, the factory premises also contains about 11 lakh tonnes of contaminated soil, one tonne of mercury, and nearly 150 tonnes of underground dumps. The government has no plans yet on how to deal with this.