The early morning fire accident in the soon-to-be inaugurated Telangana state secretariat complex on Friday has caused a lot of embarrassment to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, particularly chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
The new Secretariat complex is scheduled for a grand inauguration by the chief minister on his birthday on February 17.
He wanted to make project it as the magnum opus of his government and invited several top political leaders of the country.
Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin, Bihar deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav, JD (U) president Lalan Singh on behalf of chief minister Nitish Kumar, Jharkhand chief minister Hemanth Soren and former Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy are expected to attend the ceremony, before addressing the huge public rally at Secunderabad parade grounds.
Nobody knows what exactly happened inside the Secretariat complex and the officials are trying to hush up the whole affairs.
The BRS leaders tried to play down the incident initially saying it was just a mock drill, but they did not give an explanation as to why 11 fire tenders were rushed to the spot to extinguish the fire.
If it was just a mock drill, the government should have issued a press release to that effect. But they did not. In fact, director general of fire department Y Nagi Reddy and other senior officials monitored the entire firefighting operation, they refused to disclose any details to the media.
The entire area was cordoned off by the police and nobody was allowed to enter the Secretariat complex till the fire was extinguished.
The top portion of the building where the chief minister’s office is located has become completely black due to the thick smoke.
If nothing has happened in the Secretariat, one wonders why the police did not allow the Congress leaders to go in to find out what exactly happened. They arrested a team of Congress leaders who made an attempt to enter the complex.
It is believed that the fire accident is a sort of bad omen for the chief minister who wants to get the building to be inaugurated on his birthday. It remains to be seen whether he will go ahead with the inauguration or postpones it.
