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By:

Prithvi Asthana

20 August 2025 at 5:20:30 pm

Employee says the fire alarm did not go off

Many officials could not use fire extinguishers Mumbai: In a tragic incident a large fire broke out in the basement of Aaykar Bhavan, the Income Tax office located on Maharshi Karve Road at Churchgate in Mumbai on Monday. According to the sources, the fire broke out at 1:30 pm, but the Mumbai Fire Brigade received the initial call at 2:01 pm and officially declared it as Level-I fire around 2:15 pm. No casualties were reported in the incident and all the employees were rescued from the...

Employee says the fire alarm did not go off

Many officials could not use fire extinguishers Mumbai: In a tragic incident a large fire broke out in the basement of Aaykar Bhavan, the Income Tax office located on Maharshi Karve Road at Churchgate in Mumbai on Monday. According to the sources, the fire broke out at 1:30 pm, but the Mumbai Fire Brigade received the initial call at 2:01 pm and officially declared it as Level-I fire around 2:15 pm. No casualties were reported in the incident and all the employees were rescued from the building. As the building has a centralised air conditioning system and all the windows were closed the smoke from the fire spread rapidly throughout the building. The thick smoke also spread to the surrounding areas pf the building. Around 23 vehicles of the Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB) were engaged under the intense operation to extinguish the fire from different gates at the building. Backup ambulances police officials, and the BEST staff, were also seen at the site. The MFB deployed a DFO, ADFO, three Senior Station Officers and two Station Officers, along with three fire engines, one CFF, three jet units, one AWTT, one MWT, one WQRV, one TTL and one ALP. Specialised equipment including aerial ladder platform was deployed to evacuate people from the upper floors. Two people, a male and a female were rescued from the Guest House at the seventh floor of the building. Firefighters were successful in rescuing the staff on the lower floors as well. According to an employee, who requested anonymity said, “The fire broke out at 1:30 pm when the staff was having lunch, but the fire alarms did not go off.” “We were not allowed to exit from the main gate,” he added. The employee said, “The fire was confined to the basement and the smoke went up to all the floors of building.” Asked about the loss, the employee said, “As the fire broke out in the godown no person was injured. But the records kept in godown that are mostly old records have been burnt.” When asked about the fire drill protocol, the employee said, “The office staff did not know how to use the extinguishers, a possible reason why the fire’s intensity kept increasing.” Officials did not confirm the cause of the fire and or damage caused in the basement area. The Aaykar Bhavan, Income Tax office is multi-storey government building that serves as a workplace for a large number of Income Tax officials.

Renaming of Pune mayoral bungalow sparks controversy

The proposed name change comes nearly 20 years after the bungalow was built

Pune: The recent controversy over renaming the Pune Mayoral bungalow has less to do with a name than with the timing of the proposal. The property built specifically as the Mayor’s official residence nearly two decades ago had until now, been known simply as ‘Mayor’s Bungalow.’ The BJP’s proposal to rename it ‘Ramdoot’ has now turned a seemingly insignificant civic decision into a political argument.


The bungalow, on Ghole Road near the Pune Municipal Corporation headquarters, was conceived during a very different phase of Pune’s economic transformation. As the city’s IT sector expanded, Pune and Bangalore were competing to attract technology companies and global investment. Representatives of Indian and international firms regularly visited the Municipal Corporation to understand the city’s infrastructure, taxation and other civic arrangements. Meetings that began in the Mayor’s chamber eventually prompted the idea of a separate residence where the Mayor could host visiting business representatives and hold more extended discussions.


The proposal was backed by then-MP and senior Congress leader Suresh Kalmadi. The choice of Ghole Road was also shaped by precedent. The Municipal Commissioner and Additional Commissioner already had official bungalows, and the argument was that the Mayor, as the city’s elected political head, should have an equivalent institutional residence.


Whether the bungalow ever became the business and diplomatic salon envisaged by its proponents is harder to establish. There is little public evidence of how many prominent entrepreneurs or international business delegations actually met there. What is better known is that political meetings, particularly those involving the ruling party’s corporators, have frequently taken place on the premises.


For Pune’s residents, therefore, the building acquired an identity that was both functional and institutional: it was simply the Mayor’s Bungalow. That convention has survived changes of political leadership and the three-year period between 2022 and 2025 when an administrator ran the civic corporation.


The BJP now wants to change that identity with its proposed name ‘Ramdoot’. Former Mayor Ankush Kakade has said that the Association of Former Mayors does not support the move and has issued a public statement against it.


The political context makes the dispute more consequential. The proposal comes after the controversy surrounding the theft at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, an episode that has created an uncomfortable political environment for the BJP. Critics therefore see ‘Ramdoot’ as an attempt at symbolic damage control.


That interpretation may or may not be fair. But it raises a legitimate civic question: why now?


The BJP controlled the Mayor’s office continuously from 2017 to 2022. The corporation was then administered for three years before the BJP returned to the Mayor’s office. Yet the idea of renaming the bungalow surfaced only now, roughly 20 years after the property was created. 

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