When India is reeling under the most virulent second wave of Covid pandemic, increasing the need for medical oxygen by multiple times over, it is a shame that the Sterlite Copper Plant at Thoothukudi, which reportedly has the capacity to produce 1000MT of Oxygen per day remains shut, due to politics played out under the garb of environmental pollution.

The requirement for medical Oxygen has soared from 700 tonnes per day to 5000 tonnes per day, the huge gap in demand and supply is due to increase in critical cases of Covid needing ventilator support.

The Prime Minister yesterday held a meeting with all corporate leaders to increase the production of medical oxygen and divert all their oxygen produce for medical purposes. Many corporate giants like Reliance, Jindal, TATA, SAIL have come forward to surmount the national crisis by diverting their oxygen production for medical purposes.

Vedanta Sterlite Copper Plant has offered to reopen its plant which has oxygen production facilities to the tune of 1000 Metric Tonnes per day. So, literally a 20% of the country’s need today can be fulfilled just by Sterlite. The company had approached the Supreme Court with the proposal and had also written to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and Union Health Minister, Harsh Vardhan.

While the central government id very keen to reopen the Sterlite plants for production of Oxygen at this crucial juncture, the Tamil Nadu government tried to insanely refuse re-opening the plant citing that Tamil Nadu is an Oxygen surplus state and reopening the plant would cause law and order problem.

The CJI, SA Bobde was exasperated and thundered, that it was astonishing that when the country is in dire need of oxygen supply, Tamil Nadu says that it would not allow the reopening of the Sterlite plant for oxygen production, as it has surplus oxygen.

The CJI also said that the court is not bothered about who would run the Sterlite Plant, State, Centre or Vedanta, it is only concerned about producing oxygen from a place capable of producing it.

Funnily, advocate Colin Gonsalves tried to tell the court that he does not mind if the State runs the plant for oxygen production. The Tamil Nadu’s counsel also tried to tell the court that either the centre or state should operate the Sterlite plant and Vedanta should not be allowed to operate it for producing oxygen.

The CJI admonished the Tamil Nadu state counsel by saying that, “The State cannot say that we cannot run it (the plant). What is your problem? Just because you have problem with Vedanta, you will not use their plant and deprive people of oxygen? What is this?”

The CJI further stated that “Different states need oxygen. For example Odisha can come to Rajasthan for oxygen. Law and order issues cannot be an excuse. Why should we not use the facility when every MT of oxygen matters?”.

Notably, the Lutyens’ media cabal started conspiracy theories as soon as Sterlite offered to start production of oxygen at its plants. NDTV’s Gargi Rawat tried to cast aspersions on senior advocate Harish Salve by alleging in a tweet that he has come up with a trick to re-start the Sterlite plant by taking huge amount of legal fees from Vedanta.

Notably, Vedanta’s Sterlite Copper Plant in Toothukudi was closed controversially in 2018 following a huge orchestrated protest driven by highly politicised Christian organisations under the ruse of environmental pollution. The Centre’s Green panel had also cleared the Sterlite Plant for not violating any environmental norms or causing high level of pollution.

Despite the environmental clearance by the Green Panel, the Tamil Nadu government sealed the plant under pressure from the law and order situation created by the dubious environmental activists linked directly to Christian churches.

The Church has consistently run agendas along with so-called activists to seal all major industrial plants in India and create economic & law and order crisis, which would benefit their Indian political masters and international masters with an eye to safeguard their commercial interests as India is emerging as a formidable global economic power.

Pertinently, before the closure of Sterlite Copper Plant, India had a surplus of Copper production. After it closed, India became a net importer of refined copper after 18 years. The masks of the so-called environmentalists are exposed today as they resist re-opening of Sterlite Plant for Oxygen production even at a time of national crisis.

News input: The Hindu. Image source: Internet.

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