Mumbai, May 5: During the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) standing committee meeting on Wednesday, the corporator members of the BMC slammed the civic administration for not being able to present the report of the Dreams Mall fire incident.
Earlier on March 26, a massive fire broke out at the Dreams Mall in Bhandup that claimed the lives of nine patients admitted for Covid-19 treatment in Sunrise hospital, located on the third floor of the mall. The BMC administration had ordered a probe into the incident on March 27 and had appointed Prabhat Rahangdale - Deputy Municipal Commissioner and former Chief Fire Officer (CFO) for leading the probe. The panel was given a 15-day deadline, for submitting the report.
Earlier on April 27, FPJ had reported that it's now been more than a month and the probing panel is yet to submit its report.
Every month a record of fire incidents that have taken place in the past one month is tabled during one of the committee meetings. On Wednesday, the same was tabled. However, the investigation report was not present. Pointing out this issue, Ravi Raja - senior Congress corporator and the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the house asked the administration that why such a delay is being made.
"There have been fire incidents in Vasai-Virar and the police over there have already made arrests and here we don't know anything about how much the investigation has progressed," Raja told the Free Press Journal newspaper after the meeting.
"So many people have died in the incident. In such a situation, the administration should act immediately, and here more than a month has passed, and we are yet to get the first report," he added.
Rakhee Jadhav - a senior corporator of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and leader of the party in the BMC questioned the authenticity of the investigation that is being conducted.
"The investigation is being led by the same officer who was responsible for giving out fire NOC to the hospital administration last year, the body should have appointed someone else to carry out the probe," said Jadhav.
Alongside this, Prabhakar Shinde - a senior corporator of BJP and group leader of the party, raised a point of information during the meeting seeking details of 227 vaccination centres that the civic body has said that it will set up.
"Every corporator has suggested a potential location for setting up a vaccination booth, but we have no clarity on when the booths will start functioning. So many people stand outside the booths every day and due to shortage of vaccines many of the active booths remain closed," Shinde said.
