MAHARASTRA SECRETARIAT (MANTRALAYA) FIRE.

MAHARASTRA

SECRETARIAT (MANTRALAYA) FIRE.

 

A special meeting of Maharashtra Cabinet will be held on Friday22nd June,2012, to review the situation in the aftermath of the massive fire that engulfed the State Secretariat ‘Mantralaya’Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, who has announced a crime branch probe into the incident, will chair the meeting to be held at Vidhan Bhawan, CM’s PRO Aniruddh Ashtaputre, who was among those injured in the incident, said.Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar visited Mantralaya Friday morning and reviewed the work in progress to cool off the seven-storeyed building.The cooling process is expected to take two days.

Offices of various departments located on fourth, fifth and sixth floors damaged in the fire would be shifted to Vidhan Bhawan and Sahyadri Guest house, Mr. Chavan said.Mr. Pawar told reporters at Mantralaya that the Chief Minister’s office on the sixth floor had remained comparatively unscathed by the fire which had gutted nearby offices.The Cabinet is expected to review the preparation for the monsoon session of the State Legislature, scheduled to begin on July 9. The session may even be postponed, if needed, an official said.

The inferno at the Maharashtra secretariat on Thursday gutted the offices of many vital government departments, left at least four floors structurally weak, and incinerated scores of computers as well as thousands of important files. Speculation was rife through the day whether the fire was anaccident or an act of sabotage to destroy documents relating to crucial cases and projects.Senior officials refrained from putting a figure on the damage but admitted that the disaster had "set the government back by at least a year". With heaps of documents that lined the corridors and rooms of Mantralaya lost, the state will have to start from scratch again in many cases. Files will have to be somehow recovered, passed around departments for perusal as well as approval, and budgets allocated.The brunt of this disarray would be borne by the departments that were hit the worst on Thursday. The blaze destroyed the offices of the urban development department, revenue department, education department, home department, transport department, the chief minister, deputy chief minister and several ministers. This meant that files relating to cases such as Adarsh and Lavasa besides scores of other construction and development projects could be lost forever.

Officials stressed that Adarsh records can be recovered from the CBI or the two-member judicial commission; CBI officers too maintained they have all the "requisite documents necessary to file a chargesheet".Still, conspiracy theories raged over the cause of the inferno. Many wondered if the secretariat was sabotaged to rid it of records maintained by the urban development department of real estate proposals and projects. The theory was fed by the fact that the fire reportedly began near the department. Another conjecture was that the blaze was started to fast track the redevelopment of Mantralaya. A controversial proposal for the building's makeover as part of a slum redevelopment scheme had earlier been withdrawn.

Leader of opposition in the legislative council, Vinod Tawde, reportedly said the incident could be an accident, a conspiracy, or even an act of terror. He demanded the government set up a committee of national and international forensic experts to investigate the matter. Tawde's party colleague Eknath Khadse, who is the leader of the opposition in the Maharastra assembly, also demanded an independent investigation.With a number of theories floating around, the government ordered a probe by Mumbai police's crime branch. Also, CM Prithviraj Chavan pointed out that 27,000 government files had been digitized as part of the state's drive.
The crime branch, meanwhile, claimed there was little possibility of "any malafide intention behind the fire". "At this point, it is difficult to say anything, but we are probing all possible angles," said a police officer.
With the recovery of two more bodies from the debris of the fire-ravaged Mantralaya offices , the death toll in Thursday’s fire has risen to five. The deceased are Umesh Potekar, former president of the Baramati Co-operative Bank; Mahesh Gugale, vice-president of the Baramati Merchant Association; another businessman Shivaji Korde; and Tukaram More and Mohan More, mace-bearers outside the Maharashtra Chief Minister’s office.

                                                                  Prof. John Kurakar