Carelessness of govt, PSU management behind HPCL fire: Venkaiah Naidu

NEW DELHI: Accusing the government and HPCL management of "utter carelessness" on the fire incident in Vizag refinery, a BJP member on Wednesday demanded accountability to be fixed and the report of the committee to probe such fire incidents be made public.


Raising the issue during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu said, "It is very shocking to see a major fire accident in HPCL, Vizag where 10 persons lost their lives and 32 are injured, out of which 9 are critical...It is utter carelessness of management and government that such incidents are taking place."

Naidu said "accountability has to be fixed" as fire accidents have become common in units of state-run oil and gas companies.

Lamenting that the Centre has failed to learn any lesson from previous fire incidents, he said it has not yet implemented recommendations of the committee appointed earlier to probe such incidents and demanded that its recommendations be made public.

Naidu said earlier in January, petrol storage tanks of Indian Oil Corporation at Hazira in Gujarat were destroyed in a major fire. In Jaipur fire incident at IOC's depot, 11 lakh tonne of oil was destroyed, he said, questioning as to what action was taken.

Referring to the Vizag refinery fire, he demanded compensation to all those killed and injured besides medical insurance.

He wondered how the management of a "Navratna" company with Rs 1,90,000 crore turnover could be so casual.

While raising the issue, Naidu said it was an irony that no senior minister was present in the House, which reflected lack of seriousness on the part of the government.

A major fire broke out on Friday in the state-owned HPCL refinery in Andhra Pradesh's coastal city of Visakhapatnam after a major blast in an under-construction cooling tower leaving ten persons dead.