ORDER

1. The matter has been taken up suo-motu in light of captioned media report about death of one person and injuries to four at NLC Thermal Power, Cuddalore Tamil Nadu on 23.12.2022.

2. At the outset, we may note that the Tribunal dealt with an earlier incident in the same unit on 30.06.2020 in which six persons died and 17 were injured on account of failure to follow environmental safety norms, resulting in explosion in the boiler and the fire incident. While we will refer to the said order later, it is disheartening to note that such incident has been repeated due to negligence on the part of the management, which calls for serious soul-searching at local level of management as well as stringent remedial action at higher level in the establishment.

3. Coming back to the present matter, in pursuance of advance notice issued by the Registry on 23.12.2022, the Project Proponent (PP), M/s NLC India Ltd. has filed its affidavit dated 16.01.2023 giving sequence of events and the remedial action taken. According to the said version, flash fire took place on 22.12.2022, at about 11:32 Hrs, in lignite Bunker No. 10 of Unit I of the Neyveli New Thermal Power Station ("NNTPS") of NLC India Ltd. ("NLC"). One employee succumbed to his injuries and four more were injured. The unit is NNTPS is a lignite-based pit head thermal power station, having 2 units, being Unit I and Unit II, of 500 MW capacity each. Lignite is being used as the primary fuel for the boilers in both the units. Unit-I was running at a load of 480 MW. There were five workmen (one permanent employee and four contract workers) present for the purpose of filling the Bunkers. Their functions involved bunker filling, movement of shuttle feeder, positioning the shuttle feeder over the respective bunkers and cleaning the area. During the process of filling, after positioning the shuttle feeder above Bunker No. 10, a sudden flash fire surfaced in the vicinity of the said Bunker, which lasted for five seconds. All five Workmen were standing near lignite Bunker No. 10 and the walkway area, and they moved to the interconnecting platform walkway that leads to the Bunker Bay from the Boiler. The Bunker Bay is the place where the shuttle feeder is positioned for filling the bunker at 56ML The Feeder Bay is the place where the lignite stored in the bunker is extracted through feeder in to milling system at 29 ML. Width of this interconnecting platform walkway is about 2 Meters, with a substantial length leading to the elevator and M the stairs. Five workmen were waiting the interconnecting platform, one person, Mr. S. Thirunavukkarasu, a contract based worker, panicked and jumped from 56 ML to 29 ML of the interconnecting platform and succumbed to his injuries on the way to Apollo Hospital, Chennai. The remaining four persons who remained on the platform sustained minor injuries and immediate first aid was provided at the NLC General Hospital and thereafter they were sent to Apollo Hospital, Chennai for further treatment and as a precaution. All four injured workers were discharged on 07.01.2023.

4. Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board ("TNPCB") inspected the site on 22.12.2022 The-District Collector, Cuddalore, and Deputy Director from Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health ("DISH"), Government of Tamil Nadu("GoT") also visited the site on 30.12.2022. Further, the Additional Director (AD") from DISH inspected the Unit-l site and investigated the fire incident on 23.12.2022. The AD of DISH issued stoppage order since 13.00 Hrs on 23.12.2022 on account of a few non-compliances observed during the site inspection. Subsequently, NNTPS appealed on 26.12.2022 by submitting a report on the compliances to the Director of DISH and sought revocation of the stoppage order. Stoppage Order was revoked by Director of DISH on 29.12.2022. The PP issued an Office Order dated 22.12.2022, to form a committee to study the sequence of events that led to the fire incident, and to give recommendations t