Kerala Opposition disrupts Assembly over Brahmapuram fire

The opposition UDF legislators walked out when Speaker A. N. Shamseer denied Congress legislator T. J. Vinod’s Rule 50 motion seeking the leave of the House for an adjournment debate to discuss the “immense and unquantifiable” public health fallout of the fire.

Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) opposition unleashed an impassioned attack against the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government for “shielding politically influential contractors who heartlessly jeopardised the health of eight lakh Kochi residents by setting fire to the plastic garbage hill at Brahmapuram to cover up their abject failure to dispose of the toxic legacy waste scientifically.”

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The chaos erupted when Congress legislator T. J. Vinod introduced a Rule 50 motion seeking the leave of the House for an adjournment debate to discuss the “immense and unquantifiable” public health fallout of the “enormous environmental crime with scarce parallels in history” that “callously poisoned Kochi’s atmosphere almost permanently”.

Mr. Vinod said the government’s efforts to douse the toxic fire and mitigate its worrying public health fallout were deficient and perfunctory.

He said the air pollution endangered senior citizens, children and pregnant women. Doctors have advised many to leave Kochi. “Tourism and commerce in Kochi were on a seemingly irreversible decline”, he said.

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Opposition Leader V. D. Satheesan said the dioxin from the smouldering plastic waste was an integral component of the notorious “Agent Orange”, a herbicide and defoliant used by the US army to poison rebel fighters during the tragic Vietnam war.