Fire at MP govt’s Satpura Bhawan doused, Cong claims ‘conspiracy’

BHOPAL: Fire at Bhopal’s Satpura Bhawan, which houses several government offices, including the CBI, EOW, tribal welfare, health department, was finally doused on Tuesday with joint efforts of multiple authorities, but the politics has heated up with Congress claiming a ‘conspiracy’ theory.

Bhopal district collector Ashish Singh said fire has been brought under control.

Singh said the fire occurred first on the third floor of the building, and before it could be brought under control, it had spread to the 4th, 5th and 6th floors and the situation went out of control.

However, no casualties were reported as officials safely evacuated everyone before the fire spread. It took nearly 15 hours to douse the flames, however, by then all important documents related to different departments turned into ashes. “CISF, BMC, Airport and local administration together doused the fire and it has been controlled,” Singh said.

The fire has also heated up the politics in the poll-bound Madhya Pradesh. The opposition leaders have launched scathing attacks on the ruling BJP alleging that the fire in Satpura Bhawan was a “conspiracy to burn the documents of scams”.

Former minister and Congress MLA Jitu Patwari, former state unit president Arun Yadav along with several other party leaders raised apprehensions. “CM Chouhan… my direct question is … whether the fire broke out or has it been set? Because it is generally believed that the government does such ‘action’ to destroy evidence before the elections. Now, the BJP should also tell who were the culprits in the old fire incident. How many people were punished?” Jitu Patwari made a series of tweets.

While, the state Congress media in-charge K.K. Mishra claimed the incident was ‘sponsored’. “We had predicted this (fire) a fortnight ago in a press conference that since elections are near, the commission and corruption riddled BJP government will destroy papers to hide its scams,” Mishra added.

A similar fire incident occurred before the 2018 Assembly elections. A large number of documents of various departments located in the Satpura Bhawan were gutted and the government had the claimed that the fire had broke out due to short circuit.

In June 2011 also, a fire broke out in the same building, however, the cause of fire has not been ascertained even after one decade.