The Maharashtra Government has decided to carry out fire audits of most its office buildings in the state, said the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Mr Prithviraj Chavan, on Monday.
He was addressing the media at the Maharashtra Secretariat building, which was extensively damaged in last week’s fire.
Almost 30 per cent of the main building has been destroyed in the fire along with lakhs of files and office furniture.
Mr Chavan said the safety recommendations for those buildings whose audits have been completed would be soon implemented. Efforts would also be made to move towards paperless offices, he said.
He said that due to the fire, the State Government is functioning under very challenging circumstances.
In spite of the challenges, the Secretariat building has started functioning partially.
Given the extensive salvage work underway, the building would be open for visitors only next week.
Structural experts have given clearance for occupying the first three floors of the seven storey building, “We will decide on the fourth to sixth floors after the structural audit is complete,” he said.
Mr Chavan said that Crime Branch is investigating into the causes of the fire.
Technical expertise would be provided by the National Fire Service College, Nagpur, and the National Disaster Management Authority.
The fire has destroyed 2,000 computers, with almost 90 of the hard disks in these computers being destroyed. However, efforts are on to recover data from the 10 per cent hard disks, which have been partially damaged.
“Data located on servers is safe, whether it is sales tax data or any other government data,” he said.