Fire broke out in the new Telangana state secretariat building complex, which is in the final stages of construction, in the early hours of Friday, fire department officials said.
No one was injured in the incident, they added.
The fire mishap occurred around 2.10am, following which the workers immediately alerted the fire department. As many as 11 fire tenders were rushed to the spot and the fire was extinguished by dawn, the officials said.
The area was cordoned off by the police and nobody was allowed to enter the secretariat complex till the fire was extinguished, said an official. Though director general of fire department Y Nagi Reddy and other senior officials monitored the entire firefighting operation, they refused to disclose any details to the media.
The new secretariat complex is slated for inauguration by Bharat Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on his birthday on February 17.
A fire official on the condition of anonymity said, “The fire broke out on the top floor of the Secretariat complex.” “The exact reason for the fire is yet to be ascertained, but it appears some scrap material caught fire,” he said.
Thick plumes of smoke continued to billow out of the building till early morning, even after the fire was extinguished. “There are no casualties and no one is injured,” the official quoted above said.
Though the officials say there is no damage to the building except for blackening of walls, the extent of damage has not yet been ascertained.
Meanwhile, the police arrested a team of Congress leaders who made an attempt to enter the complex to see exactly what had happened and assess the damage caused due to fire accident.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president A Revanth Reddy said the state government’s hurry to inaugurate the new secretariat on the chief minister’s birthday without taking proper precautions led to the accident.
He alleged that the government was trying to hush up and play down the incident. He demanded that the government should allow an all-party delegation to find out what exactly happened in the secretariat complex.
Bharatiya Janata Party also demanded that the state government postpone the inauguration of the new secretariat on the chief minister’s birthday till all safety precautions were taken. Telangana BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar blamed the poor quality of work at the secretariat as the cause for the accident.
“All kinds of work including fire safety should be checked and measures should be taken to avoid any accidents,” he said.
Chief minister Rao has invited top political leaders of the country, including Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin, Bihar deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav, JD (U) president Lalan Singh on behalf of chief minister Nitish Kumar, Jharkhand chief minister Hemanth Soren and former Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy, for the inauguration of the ₹600 crore secretariat complex, before addressing the huge public rally at Secunderabad parade grounds.
