Dibrugarh, Sept. 13: Several organisations, led by the All Assam Students' Union (AASU), today demonstrated in front of the Brahmaputra Valley Fertilizer Corporation Ltd plant in Namrup, demanding a fourth unit.

AASU general secretary Lurin Jyoti Gogoi told The Telegraph over phone this afternoon that the second and third units of the Namrup plant were outdated. 'Before the Assembly elections, the BJP had promised to set up the Namrup-IV unit but after coming to power, they are not taking the matter seriously. When Sarbananda Sonowal was an MP he took up the matter but after becoming the chief minister, he was neglecting the issue,' he said.

The first unit of the fertiliser plant, set up in 1969, was shut down in 1986. The second and third units were built in 1976 and 1987 and are past their shelf life, Gogoi said.

'The government tried to privatise the plant but after protest by the people and AASU, they dropped the idea. The fourth plant has not been set up because of sheer negligence by the government.'

Gogoi said the then Union minister for fertilisers and chemicals Ram Vilas Paswan during his visit to Namrup on June 26, 2006, had announced that a fourth unit would be set up at a cost of Rs 2,500 crore and have an annual production capacity of eight to nine lakh metric tonnes of urea.

'Recently, the state government has opened some chemical and fertiliser plants which were closed down many years ago. Why is the government showing a lackadaisical attitude towards a fourth Namrup plant?' asked general secretary of Namrup Fertilizer Shramik Union, Tileswar Borah.

He said they had been demanding a fourth unit for a long time because both the functional units can shut down any time. 'To set up the fourth unit, we need adequate gas supply to increase urea production. Discussion has been going on but to no avail.'

The Namrup Fertilizer complex, renamed Brahmaputra Valley Fertilizer Corporation Ltd after bifurcation from Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation Ltd (HFCL) in April 2002, is the first factory in India to use associated natural gas as basic raw material for producing fertiliser.