In yet another blow to the survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster, a US district court has dismissed a plea seeking to make Union Carbide liable for contamination caused by its pesticide plant in Bhopal. Seventeen survivors of the 1984 gas leak tragedy had filed a case against the corporation in 1999 in the US district court in Manhattan.

The criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision to reject the curative petition on the Bhopal gas judgment is based on an inadequate understanding of the process. In fact, the Central Bureau of Investigation will be better off seeking an enhancement of the punishment under the 2010 judgment than in pursuing the criminal revision petition.

A high court order has not deterred a distillery in Sitamarhi district of Bihar from discharging effluents into the Bagmati. On January 27, the Patna High Court had ordered the Bihar State Pollution Control Board (spcb) and the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb) to check pollution from Righa Sugar Company distillery and take appropriate action.

The premise of this paper is that, despite the existence of a well-established regulatory framework to enforce environmental laws and policies in each state of India, there has been a variation in the implementation of environmental judgments.