Karnataka - Bangalore   

Govt. receives reports on electrocution of boy

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, JULY 19. Two official reports on the electrocution of seven-year old Anish at Indiranagar 2nd Stage were submitted to the Government on Monday. The contents of the reports were, however, not made public.

The Minister for Energy, H. M. Revanna, told The Hindu he had not yet gone through the reports. The Energy Secretary's office would go through it first, he said.

Mr. Revanna had ordered an inquiry by the Chief Engineer of Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Ltd. (BESCOM) into the incident. This was apart from a regular investigation by the office of the Chief Electrical Inspector.

Later, the Chief Minister, N. Dharam Singh, ordered the Principal Secretary S.V. Ranganath to investigate the incident.

Asked about the reports, Bharat Lal Meena, Managing Director, BESCOM, denied any knowledge of their contents. His counterpart in Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. (KPTCL), V. Madhu, gave a similar reply.

After Anish's death, BESCOM started removing television cables which, it said, had been illegally strung on its poles. Asked how the cables came to be there, BESCOM said the KPTCL had given seven cable companies permission to do so. But according to the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC), neither BESCOM nor the KPTCL informed it before allowing the cable companies access to the poles. "The cables were strung up without our knowledge," KERC sources said.

Two years ago, the KERC directed the KPTCL to conduct a survey on dangerous power installations in the State. At that time, the KPTCL submitted an action plan of Rs. 65 crore with the commission in that regard, but did not follow it up. But in December 2002, BESCOM said it had spent Rs. 1.4 crore on repairing dangerous installations in the city.

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