Recipe for disaster: Fast-Tracked Clearances, Paper Certifications, No Oversight

The carnage seen at Sigachi factory blast in Telangana is not the first where workers and their families have borne the brunt and will repeat itself elsewhere unless drastic steps are taken

Rosey Mukherjee

File photo of rescue operations at the Sigachi chemical factory in Telangana. Picture via special arrangement

HYDERABAD, Telangana: On June 30, 2025, a massive explosion ripped through Sigachi Industries’ chemical plant in Pashamylaram industrial area, Telangana, about 50 kilometres from Hyderabad. According to a fact-finding report by members of the Telangana civil society, the explosion killed 53 workers, 45 were reported dead, while eight are missing and presumed dead. At the time of the blast, 143 workers were believed to be present inside the factory, of whom 30 were injured.

According to media reports, the blast was triggered by a dangerous buildup of dust and pressure in a spray dryer, where temperatures reportedly soared between 700 and 800 degrees Celsius—far beyond safe operating limits, destroying a three-storey building to rubble within seconds. Bodies were hurled up to 100 meters away, and glass shattered over a 2-kilometre radius. Half-burnt cellphones, footwear, and employee identity cards of workers were found scattered near the factory site. Many bodies are charred beyond recognition, and DNA profiling was used to identify them. 

Workers Pay the Price 

Irfan Ansari, a 22-year-old from Lakhanpur in Jharkhand’s Deoghar district, had been working at the company for only 10 days, earning a meagre 500 rupees for a 12-hour shift. His body has not yet been recovered and is believed to have been completely reduced to ashes in the blast. So far, his family has received 15 lakh rupees as compensation. The government has stated that the death certificate and full compensation for the deceased will be issued only after three months. 

“Irfan was the youngest of four brothers. They all worked in different factories in the Sangareddy area,” his uncle, Mohammed Salauddin Ansari, who is also the sarpanch of Lakhanpur, told The Migration Story. He believed that the blame for the accident rests squarely with the company. “How can such a catastrophic accident occur if proper safety measures were in place?” he said. 

Irfan Ansari (22) had migrated from Jharkhand and died in the blast. Picture via special arrangement.

Sujata Jena, an advocate from Odisha, who has been actively working with migrant workers since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, has been helping families of migrant workers from the state who lost their lives. “Families of deceased workers have received one lakh rupees so far. The government has announced a compensation of one crore rupees. But there is no clarity on the disbursement process or how the workers' families will actually receive that amount,” she told The Migration Story.

Manoj Rout’s family was among those who had received one lakh rupees compensation so far. The 40-year-old from Balasore, Odisha, worked in the quality control department at the factory for 25 years and is survived by his wife and two children.

Those who sustained injuries face an uncertain future. Chandan Kumar Nayak from Bhadrak, Odisha, was working in the utility department, around 100 feet from the blast site. The 31-year-old said that he soon lost consciousness and later underwent shoulder surgery. Samir Padhi, an operator from Baharampur, Odisha, with 7 years of experience, is recovering from his injuries at a hospital. He told The Migration Story that he was unable to walk due to the severity of his injuries. He remains under medical care, with the company currently covering his treatment expenses.

Red Flags Raised

Dr. Babu Rao, a retired scientist from the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, said that the accident was a result of systemic failure. He said that the blast was clearly a dust explosion, triggered by poor safety protocols and negligence. “The initial blast occurred in the spray dryer unit, destroying it. This explosion released microcrystalline cellulose dust, which had accumulated throughout the building due to a lack of proper cleaning,” he told The Migration Story. He added that the released dust, which is highly combustible and ignites almost immediately, led to a second, far more powerful explosion that caused the full building to collapse. 

“Every industry using combustible dust is legally and scientifically required to conduct a Dust Hazard Analysis in the developed world. However, there is no such requirement in India,” Dr Rao said. He added that no preventive measures were implemented to avert the disaster because, for nearly 35 years, neither Sigachi’s management nor the supervisory authorities acknowledged the risk of such a severe explosion.

Why are chemical industries susceptible to accidents?

Over the past couple of years, India has witnessed fires and blasts in chemical factories across states such as Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. These blasts have highlighted deep-rooted systemic safety failures. 

A file picture of the Sigachi blast site. Picture courtesy Rosey Mukherjee

India’s regulatory framework—comprising laws such as the Factories Act (1948), the Environment Protection Act (1986), Manufacture, Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemical Rules (1989), and the Explosives Act (1884)—prescribes comprehensive requirements including safety audits, licensing, fire clearances, emergency exits, and mandatory personal protective equipment for hazardous industries. 

The pharmaceutical industry is a subset of the chemical industry, with laws placing special emphasis on it. For instance, the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986, classify its waste as hazardous, and the Factories Act explicitly categorises the industry as a “hazardous process” under Schedule I, underscoring the significant risks posed to workers, public health, and the environment. 

The Factories Act further requires that if any manufacturing process in a factory produces dust, gas, fumes, or vapours that are explosive or inflammable and likely to ignite, as was the case in the Sigachi blast, the factory must take all practical measures to prevent such explosions. This includes effectively enclosing the plant or machinery involved in the process to contain hazardous materials safely, removing or preventing the accumulation of explosive dust, gas, fumes, or vapours to minimise risk, and ensuring that all possible sources of ignition are either excluded or effectively enclosed to avoid accidental sparks or flames. The provisions aim to protect workers and property where volatile substances are commonly handled, such as in chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

The Factories Act also mandates that workers must be adequately trained or supervised by an experienced person. However, workers typically endure highly exploitative conditions, including 12-hour shifts. They are pushed to their physical and mental limits, leaving them without the capacity or knowledge to identify malfunctioning equipment or critical safety lapses. 

Dr Rao stated that to cut costs and save time, workers at Sigachi were not given adequate training and probably lacked awareness of the risks posed by hazardous chemicals. He added that since most of the victims are migrants, the state tends to give less importance to their deaths.  “Despite frequent industrial accidents in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, no official releases on the incidents are made for public information. There is a persistent absence of official data on workplace mortality in industrial accidents,” he said.

Factory inspectors from state labour departments are legally mandated to enforce safety regulations prescribed under the Factories Act. However, in reality, factory inspections have become largely symbolic—marked by bureaucratic complacency, lack of technical scrutiny, and, at times, collusion with factory management.

On July 26, 2024, Maddila Gurumoorthy, a Member of Parliament, raised the issue of pharmaceutical waste management in the Lok Sabha. In reply, it was stated that specific environmental standards have been set under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and bulk drug manufacturing requires prior clearance under the EIA Notification, 2006. Pharmaceutical units must also obtain consent from their state’s Pollution Control Board. However, it was revealed that only 38% of pharmaceutical companies currently publish sustainability reports. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Rao said, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification was amended, effectively removing EIA and public hearing requirements. “This change allowed many pharmaceutical companies to secure approvals under the pretext of manufacturing COVID-related drugs,” he said and added that the expedited approvals often led to companies producing regular pharmaceutical products without adequate environmental oversight, bypassing crucial assessments and public consultation. “Several such permissions led to conflicts with people during the attempts to establish the plants,” he said.

Evading clearances

One of the major reasons for unsafe conditions in India’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries is the widespread evasion of mandatory regulatory clearances. In some cases, companies operate without any environmental clearances, which come to light only after a catastrophic incident, such as the gas leak at the LG Polymers factory in Visakhapatnam in 2020. The factory had been operating without environmental clearances for over two decades until disaster struck.

Governments are also increasingly giving post-facto clearances, which allow factories to begin construction or operations without any approval. Companies that do not seek permissions bypass pre-operational scrutiny until they are caught or pressured. The EIA 2020 draft was set to institutionalise post facto clearance, but was set aside after a huge uproar by environmentalists and concerned citizens.  

Industries are also increasingly aided by self-declared compliance or self-certification mechanisms, where they submit documents claiming adherence to rules without undergoing actual site inspections. India's push for “ease of doing business” through such single-window clearance systems has created a regulatory environment that allows industries, including those handling hazardous substances, to operate with minimal oversight.

The Telangana State Industrial Project Approval and Self Certification System (TSiPASS) is one such framework. It is a statewide single-window clearance system for businesses that wish to establish industries in the state. Approvals are based on self-certification, and the government promises time-bound clearance—within 15 days for mega projects (employing more than 1,000 people and within a month for others. If the government fails to respond within the stipulated timeframe, the approval is deemed to have been granted. Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat also have well-established single window systems, similar to the TS-iPASS. Additionally, over a dozen other states and union territories have also integrated with the National Single Window System launched in 2021, which provides a streamlined route for industrial clearances across the country. 

“Lakhs of marginalised workers, including Dalit, Adivasi, and Bahujan migrants, work in hazardous industries across Telangana under poor conditions. Under the garb of ease of doing business, the state government should not go lax on the environmental and labour regulatory norms,” Meera Sanghamitra of National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), told The Migration Story. 

Meera was part of the fact-finding team that visited the site on July 13. The team, which includes several activists from the state, has demanded that the Sigachi Company management be arrested immediately and charged with murder. After the explosion, a minister in the Telangana government publicly stated there was “no urgency” to arrest the company’s Managing Director, a far cry from the principle of absolute liability that was put in place in the aftermath of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, 1984 and the Oleum Gas Leak, 1986. 

The media attention and public pressure in high-profile cases lead governments to announce generous compensation, such as the 1 crore rupees promised by the Telangana government to the families of the Sigachi victims. Smaller workplace accidents don’t attract headlines and go unnoticed, and the families of workers who die in such incidents receive meagre or delayed compensation. Legal action against employers in such cases is rare. The Employees’ Compensation Act provides clear slabs for compensation proportional to the extent of loss of working capability due to a workplace accident. But the tedious claims process leaves affected workers and their families without timely justice or support. 

Activists from Telangana-based organisations formed a fact-finding committee and visited the site on July 13 to ascertain ground realities . Picture courtesy: Fact-finding team

Rajender Surakanti, an independent journalist who runs Kandili News in Telangana, told The Migration Story that there is a stark discrepancy between official records and actual incidents. He said that an official from Telangana’s Labour Department had unofficially confirmed 72 fatalities in industrial accidents across the Medak district from March 2023 to April 2024, a figure disclosed only after the April 2024 blast at SB Organics Limited in Sangareddy district. He added that the officials admitted they only document accidents where victims or families receive compensation. Thus, minor accidents with fewer victims are often concealed by management through private settlements. Hence, many accidents and deaths go unreported, masking the true scale of the crisis.

Unless the government gives the same attention to smaller industrial mishaps and accidents and takes steps to ensure that safety protocols are maintained, it won’t be long before we witness a blast in another chemical factory with equally devastating consequences. 

Rosey Mukherjee is a Bengaluru based activist and lawyer.