Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edapaddi K Palaniswami at an all-party meeting said that the re-opening of the closed Sterlite plant at Thoothukudi can be considered for a period of four months for manufacturing oxygen only.
The meeting, which lasted for nearly two hours at the Secretariat, discussed allowing oxygen production in the backdrop of Sterlite offering to produce 1,000 MT of oxygen daily at the plant and give to various states for free to meet the surging demand for oxygen to treat Covid-19 patients.
The company had also moved the Supreme Court seeking permission to produce oxygen at the plant.
At the meeting, the DMK was for conditional approval to allow oxygen production at Sterlite. It wants the Government to operate the plant and oxygen should be made available to people of Tamil Nadu for free of cost.
MDMK leader Vaiko was also for allowing Sterlite to be operated by the State government and was against the company management operating it.
When Sterlite’s petition was heard last week by the Apex Court, a bench headed by then Chief Justice Sharad A Bobde had voiced its anguish at the State’s objection to re-open 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 told Tamil Nadu.
On Sunday, Palaniswami wrote to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking to cancel 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. Such a diversion will affect the supply to Chennai and neighbouring districts, the letter said.
The Sterlite plant has been closed since May 2018 following the death of 13 anti-Sterlite protesters in a police firing at Thoothukudi. At a meeting last week, the proposal to reopen the plant for oxygen production was strongly objected to by a section of local people.