Mayor, Corporation Commissioner chair emergency meeting on L&T work on 24 x 7 drinking water project in Kalaburagi

Two 12-yr-old boys found dead in water-filled pit at L&T construction site. Kalaburagi City Municipal Corporation & KUIDFC promise ₹10 lakh compensation each to families. L&T registered under Section 304 of IPC. Mayor & Commissioner hold emergency meeting to discuss safety measures & compensation. L&T to pay ₹10 lakh to families & put in safety measures in construction sites. Mayor & Commissioner helpless to take action.

Two 12-year-old boys, Abhishek Suresh Kannol and Ajay Bhimashankar Nelogi, were close friends who were always found playing together in their neighbourhood. They went out to play as usual on Saturday but did not come home. Their parents went looking for them in all the places that the children could go but in vain. They approached the nearby police station and lodged a missing complaint. The police who promptly acted on the complaint also launched a search operation only to find the bodies of the two boys in a water-filled pit under an overhead tank being constructed by the construction major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) on Sunday.

Kalaburagi City Municipal Corporation and the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC) officials expressed deep regret over the incident and promised a compensation of ₹10 lakh each to the families of the deceased children apart from additional compensation from the government and criminal procedure against L&T.

As on Tuesday, no compensation has been paid to the families of the deceased children, either from the government or from L&T. However, a case was registered against L&T under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code which provides for punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

On Tuesday, Kalaburagi Mayor Vishal Dargi and Municipal Corporation Commissioner Bhuvanesh Devidas Patil held an emergency meeting with public servants associated with the municipal corporation, the KUIDFC and the representatives of L&T to discuss the safety measures taken by the company in the implementation of 24 x 7 drinking water project in the city.

The pathetic situation that emerged in the meeting is that the company is doing almost nothing either to put in place safety measures in the construction site to safeguard the lives of its workmen and the public or to speed up the work to ensure that the work is completed within the stipulated time.

The more pathetic condition is that all present in the meeting, including the Mayor, the Corporation Commissioner, elected representatives of the civic body cutting across party lines, officials of the KUIDFC and the third party inspecting agency, felt helpless to take action against L&T for its negligence in maintaining safety measures in the construction site and speeding up work to complete the project within the stipulated time.

“You project yourself to be a construction major in India. With our experience in Kalaburagi in the implementation of 24 x 7 drinking water projects worth over ₹900 crore, we can comfortably say that you are unfit to implement even a small project worth around a few lakhs being implemented by a gram panchayat,” Mr. Dargi said at the meeting.