The Centre on Thursday approached the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the Karnataka High Court’s order asking it to increase the daily allocation of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) for the state from the present 962 metric tonnes (MT) to 1,200 MT. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta mentioned the plea before a bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud. The court said it will have to go through the case records first. In its plea, the Centre said the “High Court failed to consider the rationale behind allocation of certain amounts of oxygen to each State and purely on the basis of purported shortage in the city of Bangalore, passed directions which, if fulfilled, will have a cascading effect and result in the total collapse of the system in its fight against the second wave .” It pointed out that “the entire nation is feeling the effects of the second wave (of the pandemic) and in such a situation it is imperative that limited resources available at the disposal of the entire nation (in this case, oxygen supply), be put to its most judicious use, keeping in mind the overall situation in the country. Thereby, passing directions in the nature and manner the Hon’ble High Court has done vide the impugned order dated 05.05.2021, would ultimately lead to mismanagement of resources and create a further chaotic environment in an already overburdened system”. The government stated that “all hands on the deck have helped ramp up the daily production of LMO to about 9 times and transportation of unprecedented amounts of LMO has been galvanised. However, unless rationally distributed and optimally used, any amount of LMO, will be inadequate.”
