VIJAYAWADA: Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) chief N Raghuveera Reddy in a letter to Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan requested the latter to retain the Indian Oil Corporation Limited’s (IOCL) Small Can Filling Plant at Tadepalli in Guntur district. He shot off the missive in view of IOCL relocating the plant to Chennai.
In the letter, Raghuveera explained that IOCL’s Small Can Filling Plant at Tadepalli was started in 1995 and since then it has been providing livelihood to 200 families directly and 200 families indirectly.
The plant, which has a capacity of 3,000 kilolitres (KL) per month, is one of the eight plants in the country and serves 35 per cent of the Indian lubricant demand.
It caters to the needs of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Karnataka. “The cost of production at Tadepalli plant is lower than all the Small Can Filling Plants in the entire country. It is also the highest outsourcing plant in the country,” he said.
Raghuveera said such a plant is being irrationally relocated to Chennai, though the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has denied it. He urged Dharmendra Pradhan to review the proposal and decide against it and prevail upon the IOCL management to view the issue with humanitarian concern and wider interests of Andhra Pradesh.