The dome of the new Assembly building collapsed because it was too heavy for the supports that were meant to hold it up, the report into the disaster by IIT Guwahati has found.
The dome suddenly collapsed in May and an embarrassed state government was forced to appoint a third party team to investigate the cause and to carry out a safety audit on the rest of the building that still stood after the collapse. Thankfully, there were no injuries in the incident as the collapse occurred in the wee hours.
The IIT Guwahati report was placed before the high powered committee (HPC) during its meeting chaired by Assembly Speaker Metbah Lyngdoh today.
Such an ambitious construction project (the dome was meant to be higher than that of Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi) required a large amount of coordination between the different authorities responsible but this was lacking, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma told reporters.
The report also states that the overall safety of the building, including the foundations, and the strength of the remaining structure is still adequate.
The HPC has now further instructed the government that it must immediately seek explanations from the designers, contractors and others concerned for the failings mentioned in the report.
“Whatever explanation they give, based on that the next process will follow. It will be discussed in the next HPC, which the chairperson has suggested that we will try to do within the next one week or 10 days,” Sangma said.
IIT Guwahati has recommended that the replacement structure should be made of a lighter material; the original plan envisioned the dome being 450 tonnes.
A decision will be taken on this by the HPC only after the process of calling the stakeholders is complete, the CM said.
