He also announced an ex-gratia of Rs 25 lakh each for the kin of the five victims, including one staffer of the Chief Minister's office.
Four days after the fire, Chavan today resumed work from the first floor of the building chairing a cabinet meeting.
Addressing a press conference after the meeting, Chavan said the cause of the fire and how it was controlled was discussed. A panel of fire experts would be set up to assist the crime branch in the probe on how the fire started and how it was controlled.
He asserted that the probe would be conducted by government agencies only. "I am in talks with the Centre on taking help of experts from the National Fire College and National Disaster management authority," he added.
"We need to take steps that this will never happen again and hence it was decided to have a fire audit of all government buildings," he added.
"The cabinet began an exercise of taking stock of the extent of the damages, approving alternative arrangements for functioning of the departments, which had been gutted in the fire. We also want to assuage the fear among people that their personal work as well as development works would be hampered after the incident," Chavan said.
He said there was no data-server in Mantralaya and the work of re-constructing files had started on a war-footing through the Data Journey Management System (DJMS) to ascertain the number of files damaged and those that can be retrieved. (More)