Neeraj Raut The intelligence department has said that the Tarapur nuclear power plant is under threat from enemy countries as well as anti-national elements. Based on this, a new additional protection wall is being built around this center. However, since a jawan deployed for security in the working room of this center absconded with a pistol and live cartridges, a question has arisen regarding the security of this nuclear power center and research center.

Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) was entrusted with the responsibility of these important projects in order to have perfect security system for these important projects in the country. Interestingly, local staff or guests visiting the project are thoroughly screened through this system. However, laxity in this system and lack of coordination with the state police have come to light after this incident.

A simple jawan who had worked in this central security force for about 12-13 years after studying the loopholes in the security system bypassed the supervisory system and reached the Boisar railway station with fire arms from the colony without uniform and spread out. This raises the question whether this system is capable of preventing hostile elements from penetrating the existing system. Although it is certain that a high-level and deep inquiry will be made in this type of situation, necessary changes will be made, but many other aspects need to be looked at seriously by the security system.

Police verification certificate i.e. Police Verification Certificate (PVC) is mandatory for working in nuclear power plant. Locals have to face many hurdles to get this. However, the district police, CISF and the Atomic Energy Department have conveniently ignored the voice raised by the locals that the PVC inspection of the citizens coming from the province or other places is easy. On the one hand, it takes six to eight months for a local who has committed a mild crime to get this certificate, while citizens from other provinces with a criminal background are given a certificate of no crime at the local level by showing their local residence in a rented house. Therefore, such citizens can get easy access to nuclear power stations which are considered sensitive. What is special is that at present at least three to four thousand contract workers are working in different establishments and projects at this atomic island and for the security of the country, it is necessary to check the criminal background of these contract workers carefully and impartially.

It was noticed that copper and other precious metal equipments and cables were often stolen from the site of the INRP project, which is being set up at a distance from the nuclear power plant. However, the truth about such types of theft did not come out due to the passive role of the local police and the project director. Alcohol and Gutkha were freely available at the newly constructed project sites, and cases of serious injury among contract workers due to drinking have been ignored. Not only this, a private security personnel had caused an accident by driving a vehicle at night using the keys of the vehicles stored with them. Later this employee tried to commit suicide. The implication is that instead of manually correcting the flaws in the security system, attempts have been made to suppress such cases to save the jobs of the officers or to avoid action against the concerned.

On the one hand, while there is a ban on carrying a smartphone i.e. a mobile phone with a camera inside the nuclear power plant, it was also revealed earlier that the contract workers of the INRP project, which is one to one and a half kilometers away from the nuclear power plant, are enjoying entertainment based on such smartphones.

A high protection wall has been erected in a radius of 1.6 km near the nuclear power plant. It has been seen that many attempts of infiltration through the place of cracks in this wall as well as the place kept for drainage of water have not been handled properly. Not only this, the local congregations are often seen sneaking into old Akarpatti and Pokhran villages and enjoying and earning the fruits of the trees under the control of the project. In fact, there is talk that in some cases a share of it is given to the security personnel.

Another new fencing project around the nuclear plant at Tarapur is being undertaken on the grounds that the Central Intelligence Agency has informed that there is a threat from enemies. However, the Department of Atomic Energy has also ignored the fact that some of the contractors doing this work have been blacklisted by the Municipal Corporation or similar places in different works.

The safety of the project is often compromised, creating difficulties for the locals. It has also been observed that the policy of not having special contact with the locals has led to a closeness to the migrants who pose a security threat. The lack of coordination between the CISF and the state police and the lack of trust between the CISF and the state police have been seen in the previous cases as well as in this case. Therefore, it took eight to nine hours to hand over the uniform of the jawan who escaped from the CISF colony to the state police and it was easy for this jawan to go out of the district.

While there is a beach on one side of this project, it is necessary to set up a special system for the vigilance of patrolling or police with the help of local citizens, like village security forces at other places. But the local police, CISF have shown disbelief and disdain towards the citizens. While the project has the capacity to generate 1,400 megawatts of nuclear power, the surrounding villages are often left in darkness. Many roads in the villages around the project are missing street lights. Hence the limitations of monitoring the dark activities of the anti-national elements come forward. Taps, who are planning to spend crores of rupees under social responsibility, should give priority to planning necessary measures for the safety of their projects and places that are sensitive to the country. It is an open secret that contractors are expected to cheat while issuing police verification certificate and the police system needs to be empowered for that. Locals have demanded that the intelligence agencies study what exactly these employees do in their free time and what state they are in when they drink in public, in the same way that locals are monitored. The ‘pass’ that migrants get to go to important places in the center on the basis of a certificate will be dangerous for the center and instead of giving opportunities to migrants in contract jobs, it is hoped that the project should be made safer by giving more priority to locals.