The accident, blamed on Union Carbide, a US chemical group that ran the plant, killed thousands instantly and tens of thousands more from its lingering effects over the following years, according to the official figures.

A government appeal had asked for the seven company executives convicted last year of negligence to be tried on a more serious charge of "culpable homicide not amounting to murder" which carries a jail term of 10 years.

The men were sentenced to two years in prison by a state court, causing outrage and anger among survivors in Bhopal, a city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The executives were granted bail after their convictions.

"The curative petition is based on a plea that is wrong and fallacious," a five-judge bench in the top court said, adding that "no satisfactory explanation" had been given for filing the review after so long.

The charges of negligence were framed in 1996 after an order from the Supreme Court.

Survivor groups reacted with dismay at the setback on Wednesday.

"The verdict comes as a shock for all the victims," said Balkrishna Namdeo, an activist of the Bhopal Gas Victims' Association in Bhopal.

"Every victim of the Bhopal gas leak is upset and angry today and we will express our anger across India," he told AFP.

Government figures put the death tollfrom the accident at 3,500 within three days of the leak, but the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has since estimated the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 in the same period.

The ICMR has said that by 1994 some 25,000 people had died from the consequences of gas exposure, and victims groups say many are still suffering the effects today.

Rachna Dhingra, an activist from the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, said the hopes of survivors and families of the dead now resided in a separate review of the convictions in a Madhya Pradesh state court.

The state government and police have also filed petitions there asking for harsher sentences for those found guilty.

"We will use all our energy to seek justice," Dhingra told AFP.

Following a public outcry over what were perceived as lenient sentences last year, the national and state governments announced a host of measures to help survivors more than 25 years after the disaster.

These included new funds for a clean-up of the still-contaminated site, a new attempt to extradite the American former chairman of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, and the Supreme Court petition asking for increased sentences.

The shell of the old pesticide factory still stands in Bhopal and activists have complained for years that chemicals at the site have not been cleaned up, leading to continued groundwater contamination.

Separately, the federal government filed a second petition in the Supreme Court asking for higher compensation from the company, which was initially set at $470 million in a settlement reached in 1989.

Union Carbide sold its stake in the Bhopal plant after the accident and the group has since been acquired by US giant Dow Chemical.

Dow insists that all of Union Carbide's liabilities were settled in the 1989 agreement.

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