THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a major development, a fire was reported in the protocol section of the General Administration Department in the Secretariat on Tuesday evening, which led to the gutting of several office files.
The fire occurred at a time when the working of the protocol office is under the scanner after it emerged that officials here had made lapses while dealing with diplomatic baggage destined for the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram.
During the ongoing NIA and Customs probe on gold smuggling, the sleuths had recorded the Assistant Protocol Officer's statements and sought certain files from the department, many of which were provided to the probe agencies.
The fire was first noted in one of the computers by 5 pm. From there, it soon engulfed a portion of the office and gutted files that were stored in racks nearby. Due to COVID-related restrictions, only two employees were present in the office at that time. The fire was doused within 15 minutes with the help of the Fire and Rescue Department.
The incident triggered strong reactions from opposition parties, who claimed that the fire outbreak was staged to sabotage the ongoing probe into the gold smuggling case.
Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala said the government and the Chief Minister were trying to sabotage the probe.
"The fire outbreak and gutting of files were deliberately planned to derail the probe. Earlier the government had claimed that CCTV visuals from the Chief Secretary's office were destroyed in lightning," he said.
BJP State President K Surendran alleged that the fire was staged to protect Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Minorities Welfare Minister K T Jaleel from the gold smuggling case. He demanded a probe by central agencies into the fire.
General Administration Department Additional Secretary P Honey, meanwhile, said no major files were gutted in the fire.
"The files pertaining to booking of guest house rooms were gutted. All other important files are safe," he said.
The Fire and Rescue Department sources said a short circuit appears to have led to the fire.
Meanwhile, a high-voltage drama unfolded in the Secretariat complex after the fire outbreak was reported. The police whisked away BJP leaders, including state President K Surendran, and denied entry to Congress MLA V S Sivakumar into the Secretariat premises, while Chief Secretary Vishwas Mehta ushered the media out of the premises before taking questions from them.
Mehta said the police had to intervene in the matter since politicians were entering the place where the fire had broken out and giving statements. He said there will be an impartial inquiry on how the fire broke out and bureaucrats including him had no political agenda.
"We have no political agenda. We will conduct an impartial probe to check what happened," he said.
Congress MLA V S Sivakumar said it was strange that an elected representative was barred from entering the Secretariat. "This fire outbreak was created to destroy documents," he said.
K Surendran alleged that Pinarayi Vijayan was behind the fire outbreak.