The death toll in a building collapse in South Goa could be as high as 29 making possibly Goa’s worst tragedy in recent times, nearly four years after an unannounced cyclone took the lives of 26 fishermen.
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar admitted on Tuesday to the figure of 29 as well as lapses on the part of the Government in following procedure while dispensing permissions.
The hunt for the dozen-odd labourers who are as on date listed as missing, is by and large given up with the Chief Minister saying that “every authority has certified that there was no possibility of anyone surviving in the debris anymore”.
This development could now take the death toll 29, with 17 bodies already being recovered from the debris since Saturday. The Chief Minister has assured that all the bodies would be recovered and the debris cleared within 48 hours.
Meanwhile, the State Human Rights Commission has suo motu issued notice to the Goa Government seeking information about Saturday building crash at Canacona.
The rescuers have now resumed mechanically removing the debris clearing at the crash site late on Tuesday evening. The whole of Tuesday the rescue operations were carried out manually after neighbouring buildings developed cracks and appeared to weaken and threatened to collapse.
The Government has now ordered the demolition of the weaker buildings as well as a set of duplex bungalows, which were of poor quality and were also threatening to cave in during the debris clearing operation.
“We have sought technical help from a Pune-based company. The equipment to demolish the building will arrive here on Wednesday,” Parrikar said.
Parrikar has said that prima facie it appeared that bad quality of construction material and the fact that part of the foundation of the five-storey building had been in soft untreated mud, could have caused the accident.
However, despite suspending three officials, and arresting one, Parrikar ruled out political corruption as a cause for the accident, placing the blame lock stock and barrel on corrupt bureaucrats.
“There appears to be no political corruption in this case, only bureaucratic corruption. If there is, let the investigation show it. We will take action against everyone,” Parrikar said.
The Congress as well as the Nationalist Congress Party had charged that permissions for the project were granted during the BJP regime. The Opposition had also claimed that Sports Minister Ramesh Tawadkar had come into the ownership of two flats in the same project and had backed the illegalities in the same.
“These are rubbish charges. All the main permissions were granted in 2010, when the Congress was in power. Our government was sworn in in 2012,” the chief minister said.
He however did not rule out a builder-politician nexus, if people were to provide him with adequate proof. “One of the accused Vishwas Desai has already applied for anticipatory bail,” Parrikar said.
The Goa Police have deputed a team to track down the promoters of the Navi Mumbai based company Bharat Developers and Realtors. They are still on the lookout for several others.
The State Human Rights Commission to issue notice to the Goa government. The notice issued Tuesday has sought a response from the chief secretary by February 7, on what led to the accidents and the steps taken by the authorities to bring relief to those affected by the tragedy.
Calling the incident at eye opener, Parrikar said that new construction norms had been issued by the state government to ensure that such repititions do not occur.