UP to set up 61 oxygen plants under PM Cares Fund

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / Apr 30, 2021

With demand for medical oxygen by Covid hospitals outstripping supply, the Uttar Pradesh government is looking at setting up oxygen plants in 61 districts under the PM Cares Fund.

This would cover all major districts/cities including Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Agra, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Aligarh, Prayagraj, Meerut, Mathura, Ghaziabad, Jhansi, Moradabad etc.

According to UP additional chief secretary (information) Navneet Sehgal, the state had already identified 61 districts for establishing the oxygen plants.

“We are also vetting the private sector proposals of big oxygen plants in UP. This would ensure the emergence of a robust supply chain soon in the state itself,” he informed.

In UP, the supply of oxygen has already breached the record level of 600 tonnes even as the Centre has allocated the maximum quota of 850 tonnes of oxygen to UP.

The state enforcement agencies are also swooping down against the hoarding and black marketing of oxygen and other Covid drugs, including Remdesivir.

To overcome shortage of oxygen, the state has also arranged for the commodity from manufacturing plants in other states including Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and Jharkhand. This process is being monitored online for transparency.

The Yogi Adityanath government has engaged premier educational institutions, including Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur; Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow; and IIT-Banaras Hindu University (BHU) etc, for conducting oxygen audit to check pilferage of the commodity.