Cover-up underway at NTPC’s Rae Bareli plant

The officer, who had given clearance to run the boiler, is heading the labour department’s probe team. The NTPC officer who should be questioned for the accident is heading the company’s probe team. The DM of Rae Bareli, who was waiting for the CM to return from Mauritius before asking the police to register a case into the death of 32 workers, is supervising a magisterial inquiry,” exclaims an amused Awadhesh Kumar Verma, chairman of state electricity consumer forum.

UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who returned from Mauritius on November 4, asked officers to register an FIR three days after the accident. RK Purve, Director (Boiler) who had given the boiler a clean chit in June is heading the probe of the labour department. And SK Roy, executive director (operations) of NTPC, is heading the organisational probe team.

But even before the inquiries got going, a GM in NTPC, RK Sinha, declared, “It was not a human but a mechanical error that led to the blast.”  But does the blast require an independent inquiry?

NTPC Ltd was observing “Vigilance Awareness Week” from October 30 to November 4 with the slogan of “My Vision-Corruption Free India”. November 7 was to be celebrated as the company’s 42nd foundation day of the PSU and according to unconfirmed reports, the Prime Minister was to inaugurate the 500 MW sixth unit at its Unchahar plant on November 9.

But the explosion in one of the ash pipes of the sixth unit on November 1 has put celebrations on hold with 32 workers dead and 60 more workers sustaining serious burn injuries after being hit by ash, gas and steam at a temperature of 140 degrees Celsius.

Unchahar MLA Manoj Pandey claimed to have been told by workers that the automated system had failed a week before the accident and the manual system too had developed snags on October 28. Umesh Maurya, a welder, who escaped unhurt because he was working at a height of 60 metres, said, “Some painting work was simultaneously going on there at that time. Some officers had told us that PM may formally inaugurate the plant on November 9.”

NTPC denies this claim and said commercial operation was started on September 30 and there was no question of its opening.

But Unchahar MLA of the Samajwadi Party believes that the workers had no reason to fabricate a story about the inauguration. When the Government has been claiming credit for even minor achievements initiated by the UPA,  there was a high probability that NTPC would have wished for the PM to inaugurate the first 500 MW unit approved by the Modi Government and  completed in ‘record time’.

Umesh Maurya, a welder, recalled, “On October 29, the supervisors were told that clinker (solid mass of ash) was forming in the ash-pipe. Supervisors told us on October 30 that the unit would be closed after October 31 for a few days for cleaning and decoration works. The snag in the pipe would be rectified then. But the unit was not closed  even on November 1”, Umesh said, adding that about half-a-dozen engineers were called at around 11:30 AM on November 1 when the deafening sound in the ash-pipe increased. The engineers were still working and when workers were preparing to hand over charge to the next shift at 4 PM. But the pipe at a height of 20 metre exploded, covering all those who were working up to a height of 50 metres in ash, gas and steam.

The day after the accident, state BJP spokesman Harish Chandra Srivastava demanded a probe to find out “why the unit was started six months in advance”. Several experts  questioned NTPC’s decision to replace high grade coal from Australia with poor grade ones from Jharkhand’s Jharia mines.

Swami Prasad Maurya, the UP labour minister who had rushed to the spot the same evening, told reporters that “workers had heard the emergency siren ring but the unit was still not closed.” The next day he changed his statement and clarified that “the siren was not functioning.”

However, the minister insisted that “safety measures and maintenance mechanism were incomplete” and ordered a departmental probe to find out how a No-Objection certificate was issued despite the boiler not being fully equipped.

Labour commissioner PK Mohanthy  said, “We are looking into the clearance given to the boiler. The license was issued on June 27 for six months.” The NTPC had stated that the unit was functioning on trial basis from April this year, raising questions whether the boiler was being run illegally between April and June.