This follows the reports that all the major Sufi shrines including Peer Dastgeer Sahib shrine have been lacking proper fire safety measures.
Waking up to the disaster at the 245-year-old Peer Dastgeer Sahib shrine, Omar Abdullah government has decided to conduct fire safety audit of all the major heritage Sufi shrines in the Kashmir Valley.
This follows the reports that all the major Sufi shrines including Peer Dastgeer Sahib shrine have been lacking proper fire safety measures. The shrine of 11th century saint Peer Dastgeer Sahib Hazrat Gous-ul-Azam Sheikh Syed Abdul Qadir Jeelani mysteriously gutted in a fire on Monday.
Divisional Commissioner Kashmir Asgar Hassan Samoon convened a high level meeting to discuss the fire safety measures at the shrines in a bid to avert tragedies like the fire disaster at the Peer Dastgeer Sahib shrine in future.
The meeting decided to form an expert committee which will start fire safety audit of all the shrines and submit its recommendations to the government. “The meeting decided that a fire safety audit of all major heritage shrines of Kashmir would be done by a committee of experts very soon”, said a government spokesman.
There are over 100 heritage shrines across Kashmir of which 40 to 45 have complete wooden structures that make them vulnerable to fire. Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) had already petitioned the government to take proper fire safety measures since fire extinguishers or water canon cannot be of much help when there is fire in the wooden structure.
“We had told them only eight days before that no shrine in Kashmir has a proper fire safety mechanism. Now we want foolproof fire safety mechanism including proper wiring systems in these structures”, said Mohammad Saleem Beg, convener of INTACH Kashmir chapter.
J&K finance minister Abdul Rahim Rather said action plan for protection and preservation of the shrines in the state will be prepared by the experts on war footing basis. “The priority is to reconstruct Peer Dastgeer Sahib Shrine at the earliest,” he said. `
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