Soon after his return from Mauritius on Saturday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath visited the workers critically injured in the blast at the NTPC’s thermal power plant at Unchahar. The Chief Minister visited the Civil Hospital, King George medical university and the SGPGI.
The Chief Minister said the blast at the thermal power plant is a very tragic incident. Expressing his sympathy for the blast victims, Yogi Adityanath said the State Government has full sympathy and doing everything possible within the means to provide relief to those injured and the bereaved families. He said the Union energy minister has already visited the blast site at Unchahar in Raibareli district and the State Government made arrangements for the airlift to Delhi to those seriously injured.
The explosion, one of the worst industrial disasters in the country, left at least 33 dead and nearly 100 injured. Shortly after the incident, Yogi Adityanath had announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the family of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured, besides Rs 25,000 for other injured workers. Later the Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also sanctioned Rs 2 lakh and NTPC management also announced to pay Rs 20 Lakh to the families of the survivivors.
Initial reports from the site of the accident indicate that safety norms were violated. A NTPC official, however, said that “it is too premature to conclude the exact causes of the blast at the thermal power plant and a committee has been constituted headed by the executive director of the NTPC which will submit its report within one month’’. The 1,550-MW power plant supplies electricity to nine states and employs around 870 people.
As the death toll in the explosion at the NTPC’s Unchahar plant in Rae Bareli two climbed to 33 Friday, it emerged that barring three who were NTPC employees, the dead and injured were contract workers.
These workers included those working for firms such as Vijayawada-based Indwell, who were painting the boiler, and Kolkata-based controls and instrumentation company Powertronix, who were either working in the vicinity of the boiler or were called in to assist the process of de-choking the bottom hopper — the funnel-shaped bottom end of the boiler — by using rods to push out ash clinkers while the boiler was in operation, though running at a reduced load. Most workers were probably unaware of the dangers involved in the exercise.