Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami has convened an all party meeting at the State Secretariat on Monday to discuss the issue of allowing the Sterlite copper smelter plant at Thoothukudi to reopen to produce oxygen. The DMK said it would participate in the meeting.
Sterlite has offered 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 a shortage of oxygen to treat COVID-19 patients.
Mr. Palaniswami on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking that the diversion of 80 KL of liquid oxygen from Sriperumbudur to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana be immediately stopped as the active case load in Tamil Nadu had crossed the one-lakh mark.
Last week, 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.
In May 2018, 13 anti-Sterlite protesters were killed in a police firing at Thoothukudi.
The proposal to reopen the plant is facing resistance from a section of residents in Thoothukudi.
