A fire broke out in the newly built Telangana secretariat complex on Friday which is to be inaugurated on February 17th. The fire is being suspected to have started out of a pile of scrap material that was present on the ground floor of the site. No casualties have been reported.
Multiple fire brigades were called to put out the fire as soon as the fire control room received the call at 2.20am. An officer stated, “Within four minutes, four brigades from the secretariat and assembly fire stations reached the spot. The operation lasted 2 hours. There is no damage to the building except for the blackening of walls due to thick smoke. Work was going on in certain areas but the cause of the fire is not clear”.
The building is built in an area of over 7 lakh sq. ft. and possesses all modern amenities, It is worth 616 crore.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded the state to postpone the new secretariat building’s inauguration. Telangana BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar blamed the poor quality of work done on the building to be the cause for the accident.
The newly built secretariat will be named after BR Ambedkar. The construction of the building had started in December 2020 and took 2 years to finish after the court dismissed petitions filed by opposition parties and campaigners.