Chennai, April 26 :  Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K.Palaniswami today chaired an all party meeting on allowing the Sterlite copper smelter plant at Thoothukudi to reopen to produce oxygen, the demand for which has been on the rise in view of the increasing CVOID-19 caseload.

The principal Opposition DMK, BJP, Congress, CPI, CPI(M), and leaders of recognised political parties participated in the meeting held at the State Secretariat.

While a majority of the opposition parties favoured re-opening of the plant to produce oxygen for four months, Mr Palaniswami said the government’s intention was not to open the plant as it was the government which had closed the plant due to protests.

He also pointed out that the corona case load has been increasing daily and the oxygen requirement too was increasing.

The Opposition parties said the government could take over the plant as suggested by the Supreme Court and constitute a monitoring committee to ensure that the plant was functional only for producing oxygen taking
into account the prevailing COVID situation and the increase in demand for oxygen.

They also suggested that power supply could be restored to the plant for four months only to produce oxygen.

The meeting was held in the back of Sterlite coming forward to produce 1,000 MT of oxygen per day from the facility and had moved the Supreme Court to allow it to produce and provide oxygen for free at a time when many States were reeling under oxygen shortage to treat COVID-19 patients.

When the Sterlite plea came up for hearing, the state government said the plant could not be re-opened as it did not want to see yet another firing incident to happen.

However, a Bench headed by then Chief Justice Sharad A.Bobde had voiced its anguish at the State’s objection to reopen the plant.

“We do not care if it is you, Vedanta, Centre, A, B, C who runs the plant, but oxygen must be produced from a place capable of producing it…The Constitution demands that material resources should be equally distributed all over the country,” the then CJI had said.

The sterlite plant was closed by the Tamil Nadu goverment after the firing incident in May 2018, in which 13 anti-Sterlite protesters were killed.

Even now, the proposal to reopen the plant is facing resistance from a section of residents in Thoothukudi, with the locals arguing that let the Vedanta group produce oxygen from its other manufacturing facilities.

‘When it can produce oxygen from its other facilities, what is the need for re-opening a closed plant in Tuticorin. There is some hidden agenda in it’, the locals argued.

The meeting was held a day after Mr Palaniswami wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to immediately stop the diversion of 80 KL of liquid oxygen from Sriperumbudur to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as the active case load in Tamil Nadu had crossed the one-lakh mark.(UNI)