Tony Chammani and Soumini Jain, two former Congress mayors of Kochi, alleged that the Brahmapuram fire and the time taken to extinguish the fire was a result of mismanagement and inefficiency in waste management and rescue operations by the state government and the Kochi Corporation.
Mayor M. Anilkumar, who failed to cancel the work contract awarded to a private firm for biomining in Brahmapuram, was protecting the vested interests of his party bosses. Though the mayors of Kollam and Kannur took action against the firm in the public interest, the mayor of Kochi failed to take action against the company. Instead, he was attempting to discredit those who had exposed the civic body’s missteps, they said in a joint statement issued on Sunday.