Twenty-three people died and eight were injured when a firecracker factory exploded in Virudhunagar, the Tamil Nadu town known as India’s fireworks capital. The district administration and police were quick to pin the blame on the manufacturer, saying it broke the rules and had more employees than permitted.
The Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation, which licenses these units under the Explosives Rules, has yet to give its own account. Its explanation will be watched closely.
A decade of deaths
This was not the first such blast. Since 2010, 262 people have been killed and 202 injured in Virudhunagar’s fireworks industry, a count that has kept growing in the years since.
The Madras High Court said in 2024 that officials, investigating officers included, were helping the guilty escape legal consequences. Eight more blasts hit firecracker factories in the region the very next year. They killed 26 people and maimed 20. The court also observed that if the village administrative officer were a local resident, such blatant breaches of licence conditions and illegal units might not happen.
Blame spreads across party lines. Accidents under both the AIADMK and DMK governments point, in the view of the Free Press Journal’s analysis, to indifference to loss of life among politicians and bureaucrats alike.
The workers nobody sees
National debate about firecrackers usually turns on air pollution, a concern the analysis calls well-founded. The people who make the pyrotechnics for Diwali and other festivals stay out of sight, even when they die. Their families receive paltry compensation, and normal production often resumes soon after.
Last year the National Green Tribunal opened its own case on firecracker factory accidents. It noted that neither the safety organisation nor the district administration had published a standard operating procedure for these units. Neither body told the tribunal what action it had taken, or whether mandatory insurance had been put in place.
The government that takes over after the April 23 poll, the analysis argues, has its work set out. It should formalise, professionalise and mechanise the industry, with workers insured by their units for at least Rs 10 lakh each.
