Carbide India Officer Resigns

Keshub Mahindra, 63, a prominent Indian industrialist, resigned as chairman of Union Carbide India Ltd., whose parent company, Union Carbide Corp. of Danbury, Conn., is being sued for the 1984 Bhopal poison gas leak that killed more than 2,000 people.

A company statement gave no reason for Mahindra’s resignation, but it quoted him as telling the board he had been thinking about retirement before the disaster.

“And to do so immediately after would have amounted to an act of utter irresponsibility,” he told the board, according to the statement.

Carbide India’s directors, at their annual general meeting in Calcutta, elected managing director Vijay Gokhale as the new chairman.