Around 4,000 Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were destroyed after a fire broke out in a government building in Kolkata on Wednesday, people aware of the developments said.
“Preliminary investigation suggests that the fire started on the third or fourth floor. We wonder how it reached the eighth and ninth floors. The fifth, sixth and seventh floors in between were not damaged,” state fire minister Kaushik Chowdhury said on Thursday.
The fire broke out around 9.50 am at the 10-storey administrative building of the zilla parishad of South 24 Parganas district in Kolkata’s Alipore area.
Ten fire tenders were pressed into service to bring the fire under control.
According to fire officials, the building houses several state government departments. Arrested TMC leader Jahangir Khan, who was also the Karmadakshya of the zilla parishad, had his office in the building.
The zilla parishad is run by the Trinamool Congress (TMC), and South 24 Parganas is considered a bastion of TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee.
Chowdhury visited the spot on Thursday to assess the situation. “Apart from a few government offices, including one linked to the midday meal scheme in schools, around 4,000 EVMs were destroyed. They were kept on the eighth and ninth floors. There were EVMs from around 10 Assembly constituencies,” he said.
“An FIR was registered and an investigation has been initiated. Forensic officials had come to collect samples. As the building was still hot, they faced difficulty in entering the floors that were gutted,” he added.
