Mumbai : The Brihahnmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), on the orders of the Bombay High Court (HC), has appointed a three-member committee to conduct an inquiry in the Kamala Mills fire tragedy. The corporation will now seek the standing committee’s approval of its proposal to pay Rs 18.30 lakh to the members of the inquiry committee, at a meeting scheduled for next week.
The three-member committee includes retired Kerala High Court chief justice A V Sawant, retired urban development secretary K Nalinakshan and renowned architect Vasant Thakur. As per the proposal, the BMC will pay the three members as per the standards of the Seventh Pay Commission, which will entail an expenditure of Rs 18.30 lakh. The inquiry committee members have been provided vehicles for travel, which entails fuel cost, an office in the BMC headquarters, with civic staff to assist them.
The inquiry committee was set up in April 2018 and was expectted to submit its report by August 31, 2018. But the in-depth inquiry is likely to exceed the deadline, and therefore, the associated costs may also rise accordingly, the proposal clarifies.
The proposal mentions that retired Justice Sawant has informed the BMC chief Ajoy Mehta that he will not accept any payment for his work. However, payments will be made to the two other members and the civic staff comprising clerks and stenographers who are assisting them in the documentation process.
Fourteen people were killed in a massive fire that broke out in Mojo Bistro, one of the open-terrace restaurants in Trade building in the Kamala Mills Compound, Lower Parel, and spread to the pub One Above, adjacent to it, on December 29, 2017. The tragedy exposed civic negligence in granting illegal permissions to restaurants. BMC Commissioner Mehta himself conducted an inquiry and submitted a report to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Following his inquiry, Mehta had suspended five civic officials, including an assistant divisional fire officer, engineers and health officials. The G-south ward (Lower Parel) assistant commissioner Prashant Sapkale was immediately transferred to the Andheri east civic ward.