Among the 184 temple festivals across the State where fireworks are traditionally held, the Thrissur Pooram was the only temple festival in the Malayalam calendar this year to earn the permission of the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) to hold the display licensed by District Collectors.
It means that if there had been any fireworks in connection with any other temple festival in the State after last year’s Puttingal temple fireworks tragedy, it was unauthorised and could invite action under the law, said R. Venugopal, Deputy Chief Controller of Explosives, Hyderabad, who supervised the Thrissur Pooram fireworks.
Dr. Venugopal told The Hindu that the PESO inquiry commission, constituted in the wake of the Puttingal tragedy, had recommended that all fireworks containing the banned chemical potassium chlorate were unauthorised and under this norm, traditional Kerala fireworks such as Kuzhiminnal, Gundu, and Amittu had been banned.
Safety distance
He said most of the traditional fireworks venues of the State did not have the prescribed safety distance of 100 meters and the magazines of the few that met the norm did not comply with the distance criterion. Moreover, the fireworks used to be carried out without the mandatory on- and off-site emergency plans.
He said that licence for the Thrissur Pooram fireworks was granted by the Thrissur District Collector on the basis of the compliance of the recommendations of an ad hoc committee headed by Shailendra Singh, Joint Secretary, Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry, under which PESO functions. When examined by PESO, it was found that the Thrissur Pooram committee had complied with all safety norms stipulated by it.
“Now the committee has set a model for regulating fireworks in Kerala by conveying the message that all festival committees should comply with the Explosives Rules, 2008, and this can bring the 200-year- old fireworks tradition in Kerala back to normal,” Dr. Venugopal said. Prior to the Puttingal tragedy, the licence for fireworks in Thrissur was given to 20 persons by District Collectors. This year, it was reduced to two because of the stringent measures adopted.
