Bhopal: A committee probing into fire incident at the National textile corporation (NTC) has assessed the loss to be around Rs 84 crore, however, it failed to fix responsibility on anyone for the incident. The panel, constituted on the direction of Union textile ministry, is reportedly also silent on exact cause that led to inferno at the textile unit.
A massive fire had engulfed the textile mill run by the NTC on February 25 this year, though no casualty was reported, the factory, as per official sources, suffered loss of over Rs 100 crore. The unit was gutted and it took about seven hours for around 40 fire tenders to control the flames. Fire tenders of the Army and the police were also pressed into service to douse the fire. Even after the incident, no fire safety engineer has been appointed at the mill till date.
While general manager AK Dikshit, who was posted at the mill at the time of incident, was transferred last month, the then factory manager Virendra Shrivastava has also retired. Shrivastava quoting the probe report said that as per the panel the unit suffered loss of Rs 84 crore in the fire. However, he claimed that report did not mention the exact reason of the inferno at the mill and even failed to fix the responsibility for the lapses that led to the incident. Former GM, however, expressed his ignorance about the report saying that he is no longer posted at the mill.
Even the new General manager (GM) Gajendra Shukla denied having any knowledge about the probe report saying that he joined factory recently. On absence of any fire safety engineer, Shukla said that the recruitment will be done at the earliest.
Questioning the probe report, Vinod Richharia, a former employee and union leader says that it is hard to believe that the committee could not find anyone guilty for such an incident. Water pumps did not operate on time which escalated the fire, besides there were other irregularities as well, claimed Richharia added.
