Bhopal is the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarters of Bhopal District and Bhopal Division. The city was the capital of the former Bhopal State. Bhopal is known as the City of Lakes for its various natural as well as artificial lakes and is also one of the greenest cities in India.
A B-1 class city, Bhopal houses various institutions and installations of national importance. Some of these include ISRO's Master Control Facility, the CSIR AMPRI, MANIT, IISER, SPA, IIFM, BHEL, NLIU and the under-construction AIIMS.
The city attracted international attention after the Bhopal disaster, when a Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide manufacturing plant leaked a mixture of deadly gases including methyl isocyanate on the intervening night of 2 / 3 December 1984, leading to the worst industrial disaster in the history of industrialization and a loss of thousands of lives. Since then, Bhopal has been a center of protests and campaigns which have been joined by people from across the globe
