Thaindian News

New Delhi, Feb 4 (IANS) The Supreme Court Friday issued notice to the central and Tamil Nadu governments on a petition seeking compensation to the families of 94 students who died in a fire in a primary school in Tamil Nadu’s Kumbakonam town in July 2004.The bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma issued notice on the petition by the Kumbakonam Fire Tragedy Victims’ Association (KFTVA).

The petitioner has also demanded a 12 percent per annum interest on the compensation since the date of the tragedy - July 16, 2004 - when a fire broke out in Sri Krishna Aided Primary School in Kumbakonam town of Thanjavur district, killing 94 students and leaving 18 with grievous injuries.

The relatives of the deceased were earlier paid Rs.1 lakh, while Rs.25,000 was given to those seriously injured and Rs.10,000 were paid to those sustaining minor injuries as ex-gratia payment from the Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund.

The killed included students of two other schools - 13 students of the Saraswati Nursery and Primary School and 10 students of the Sri Krishna Girls High School. All the three were functioning from the same building.

“The legal position is that more than one school can’t function in a single building,” the petition said.

The Justice K. Sampath Commission, which inquired into the incident, laid the blame on the state education department for not enforcing rules and regulations. Set up on July 20, 2004, the commission submitted its report on July 13, 2005.

It also noted that three schools were operating from the same premises and the nursery school was functioning without recognition from 1993 to 2003.

The commission said it was found that the school did not satisfy the norms required for upgradation yet, for “extraneous reasons”, it was permitted to be upgraded - first as middle school and then as a high school.