Tamil Nadu

The Tamil Nadu government today cancelled the land allotted to Sterlite for second copper smelting plant in Tuticorin, a day after it ordered the permanent closure of first plant amid violent protests, which claimed 13 lives.

The E Palaniswami-led government in Tamil Nadu on Monday shut down the Sterlite copper smelting plant in Tuticorin nearly a week after clashes during the protests in the port city claimed 13 lives.

DMK working president MK Stalin today described as "drama" the Tamil Nadu government's order to permanently close the Sterlite plant at Tuticorin.

Allaying fears over outbreak of the deadly Nipah virus in Tamil Nadu,which has claimed 13 lives so far in Kerala, state health minister C Vijaya Baskar said the government had taken all precautionary steps to prevent it.

The Tamil Nadu opposition's biggest question -- who authorized the police to fire on anti-Sterlite protesters last week - was finally answered on Monday. An administration officer, Sekhar, has claimed that he had asked the police to open fire, because the protesters were planning to set fire to the collectorate and the adjoining living quarters of Sterlite employees.

The Sterlite plant facing protests in Tamil Nadu's Tuticorin from local residents concerned about pollution will be shut down permanently, Tamil Chief Minister E Palaniswami said on Monday.

Six days after the violence and police firing in Tamil Nadu's Tuticorin -- in which 13 protesters demanding closure of the Sterlite copper smelting plant died -- deputy chief minister O Panneerselvam met the injured people and their families at a local hospital.

Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam said on Monday his government would take all steps to permanently shut a copper smelter run by London-listed Vedanta Resources after deadly protests demanding its closure on environmental grounds.

A troubled 2018 so far for billionaire Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Ltd. may get worse amid concern that its key copper smelter in southern India could remain shut until 2019, further pressuring a stock that's down 25 percent since the start of the year.

A video of a woman confronting a minister when he visited a government hospital in Tuticorin district on Sunday to meet those injured during anti-Sterlite protests there last week and asking him why he cannot announce its closure, has gone viral on social media.

Two youth drowned allegedly while taking bath in Bhavani river in the district, police said today.

A recording of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's conversation with her doctor has been released by the commission investigating the circumstances of her death. Questions have been raised about the death of the former Chief Minister, who was at Chennai's Apollo Hospital for 75 days. She died in December 2016.

Months after hospital authorities said that CCTV cameras were switched off during Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's treatment, a recording of her voice was made available to the media by the commission probing her death.

There is a descended sense of gloom at Kumareddiyarpuram village, just a kilometre behind Tuticorin's Sterlite plant which is the ground zero for the three-month-long protests against the copper plant. It was protests by farmers here over the past three months that had struck a chord with people and intensified the anti-Sterlite campaign that ended with the deaths of 13 people

The Union Environment Ministry had given clearance to the controversial Sterlite plant in Tamil Nadu's Thoothukudi after getting a go-ahead from the state pollution control board, an official said on Friday, dismissing the allegations that the central government had directly cleared the copper smelting unit.