Mantralaya: A quick guide to the conspiracy theories...

Even as Maharashtra Chief Minister was quick to debunk conspiracy theories relating to the fire at Mantralaya, the seat of the state administration, Twitter, Facebook and the print media were full of it.

At the top of the charts of conspiracy theories was the one about the destruction of files relating to the Adarsh Society scam, where senior state politicians and bureaucrats allegedly managed to grab flats in a building meant for the welfare of serving and retired defence personnel.

The suspicions were fanned further by the fact that next week three former Chief Ministers – Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushilkumar Shinde, and Ashok Chavan – were scheduled to testify before the inquiry panel headed by retired Justice JA Patil. These theories have since been laid to rest (but only partially) as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) announced that it had “seized all documents pertaining to Adarsh from the UDD (urban development department), including their hard disks, when we started our investigations regarding the housing scam."

Hindustan Times quoted an official of the Adarsh inquiry commission as saying “We have copies of all UDD’s Adarsh files.”

However, rumours that important papers relating to scams (not just Adarsh, but many others) were destroyed deliberately simply refused to die because of the sheer number of destroyed files. According to The Times of India, the state government was still to account for 4.82 crore data pages stored in Mantralaya. No one knows what has been lost.

The finger-pointing clearly has begun – including one that seemed to point at the CM himself. Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, the ambitious NCP leader with designs on the CM’s chair, had this to say: “The CM’s committee room and cabinet hall were completely destroyed in the fire but there was absolutely no damage to Chavan’s personal chamber. It is surprising.”

Another conspiracy theory relates to the Mantralaya building itself. Since the CM had rejected a plan suggested by NCP Minister Chhagan Bhujbal to redevelop the government property, maybe someone could have tried to make redevelopment inevitable by setting the fire.

The rumours were not doused when Sharad Pawar, NCP supremo, told the media that he had consulted officials of the national disaster agency after the fire and they were of the view that Mantralaya’s eight-storey structure should be rebuilt.

The Times quoted the CM as saying that he would take a final decision on redevelopment after receiving the structural audit report. “Only the Maharashtra government will take a decision on the redevelopment. It will be done by the government itself."

A blogger on Rediff.com contributed another conspiracy theory to the pot: the fire may have been started to avoid many inconvenient RTI queries. The blogger Krish (read here) wrote: “Many of us RTI activists have suffered a direct hit. We have lost hope of getting the documents we need to unearth scams, as Mantralaya departments will now routinely deny us saying that the files were burnt, or are in disarray and hence unavailable under RTI.”

Nothing, it seems, like a good fire to fan the embers of conspiracy theories.