“It’s the unbelievable disregard for safety norms and the shameless violation of the rules by the festival committees and the local authorities that caused the fireworks accidents at temple festivals in Kerala,” says VK Venkatachalam, who has for a long time been campaigning to keep the use of fireworks and elephants out of festivals.

“In the case of the Devi Temple at Paravoor, the temple festival committee had gone ahead with the display despite the Kollam district administration’s denial of permission to the event,” Venkatachalam, who is the Secretary of the Heritage Animal Task Force, told BusinessLine . “The temple committees are often emboldened by the fact that the government wouldn’t take the violations seriously as places of worship are involved.”

Venkatachalam has fought several legal battles against the use of elephants and fireworks to attract people to temple festivals. He alleged that the district administration and the police had totally failed to ensure the Supreme Court directives and the provisions of the Explosives Rules 2008.

“For instance, the Supreme Court has directed that no fireworks be carried out between 10 pm and 6 am,” he noted. “But the massive fireworks display at the Paravoor temple had begun around midnight and gone on for three hours.”

He said that the explosion was caused by a firework that had crashed back after being fired on to the building where the explosives had been stored.

He pointed out that people living around the temple had for several years complained against the heavy use of fireworks at the annual Meena Bharani festival as the explosions had caused damage to their houses and harm to their health.

Several government agencies had recommended moving the fireworks display to a less crowded place and cutting the intensity of the display.

He pointed out that the Explosives Rules 2008 insisted that the fireworks display should be held at least 100 metres away from people and residential places, but at Paravoor it was just 30 metres away from the spectators. He also said that the Rules allowed the use of only 15 kg of explosives, but almost always hundreds of times of the permitted quantities were used at temple festivals.

For instance, at the Thrissur Pooram fireworks, the District Collector could permit the use of only 15 kg of explosives, but a minimum of 12,500 kg were used every year, he alleged.

Venkatachalam alleged that politicians, temple authorities, festival committees, fireworks contractors and the chemicals suppliers were all responsible for the accidents that have killed so many people.

The district administrations, which were empowered to issue the fireworks display licence, always looked the other way though they knew well that the rules would be blatantly broken.

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