Chennai: Opposition parties including the DMK, Congress, PMK, DMDK, CPI and CPI(M) attended the all-party meet chaired by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami to discuss the issue of allowing the Sterlite copper smelter plant at Thoothukudi to reopen to produce oxygen.
While R S Bharathi and Kanimozhi MP attended the meeting on behalf of the DMK, K V Thangkabalu represented the Congress, L Murugan and K T Raghavan the BJP, R Mutharasan the CPI, K Balakrishnan the CPI(M), S Anburaj the DMDK and Radhakrishnan the PMK.
The plant was shut and sealed back in May 2018 after the police firing in an anti-Sterlite protest, killing 13 people.
People are dying due to lack of oxygen, the Supreme Court had said on 23 April, asking why the Tamilnadu government cannot take over the Sterlite copper unit for producing oxygen to treat Covid-19 patients.
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 Tamilnadu had crossed the one-lakh mark.