BREAKING : Centre Moves Supreme Court Challenging Karnataka High Court Direction To Increase Daily Oxygen Quota For Karnataka As 1200 MT

The Central Government has approached the Supreme Court challenging an order passed by the Karnataka High Court yesterday(May 5) directing the Centre to increase the daily liquid medical oxygen allocation for Karnataka as 1200 MT.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta mentioned the Special Leave Petition filed against the High Court order before a bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud today, while the bench was hearing a case related to oxygen supply to Delhi.

Justice Chandrachud told the SG to mention the matter before the Chief Justice of India Justice N V Ramana.

"What can we do without seeing the papers?", Justice Chandrachud told the Solicitor General.

The High Court passed the order yesterday after taking note of the incidents of COVID patients dying due to shortage of oxygen.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice AS Oka and Justice Arvind Kumar of the High Court ordered :

"In the circumstance we have no option but to issue a mandatory direction to the Government of India to again consider representation made by the state government, on April 30. We direct the state government to immediately submit a representation to the government of India, with a projected estimate of oxygen for next one week. Representation shall be considered by the Government of India, within four days. Till representation is considered, we direct the government of India to increase the cap on supply of Oxygen to the state to upto 1200 MT per day, with immediate effect."

The High Court had earlier noted that though the State Government had made a demand for 1700 MT oxygen per day, the Centre had only increased it to 862 MT.