A day after Howrah’s Town Hall roof came crashing down, mayor Gopal Mukherjee and five mayoral council members were back in office on Monday, amidst widespread protest from some officers of the Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC), who claimed that the building was unsafe for use .

The state government has set up a four-member committee, comprising chief engineers of the Howrah Improvement Trust (HIT), the Bengal Engineering College, P.C. Patra, commissioner of HMC, along with the director, project planning unit and coordinating director, Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority, to probe the disaster and submit a report within a month.

Leading Monday’s protest was P.C. Patra, who refused to go inside the 142-year-old structure. “As far as I am concerned, the mayor has to be clear about the building’s status. The building is definitely not safe and I am not going inside now,” Patra said.

Other senior officers, too, protested the mayor’s decision to hold office in the building, even as debris was being removed.

Unperturbed by all the hue and cry, mayor Gopal Mukherjee reached office around 1 pm on Monday and immediately went into his ground-floor office to hold a meeting. But within minutes, he strode out. His office was partially damaged in Sunday’s collapse.

After a few minutes’ discussion, Mukherjee decided to turn his private assistant’s office, located in an adjacent room, into his new office. “Until the damage in my office is repaired, I will hold office here. But the building is not unsafe. Only the 119-year old roof of the first floor had cracks. The foundation is very strong,” he claimed. One of the reasons behind its neglect was acute financial crisis. “We have learnt our lesson,” he added.

Late on Sunday, engineers from HIT, BE College and HMC chief engineer Malay Acharya inspected the site. “We are assessing the damage and will decide within a day or two whether the building can be used for official purposes or not,” said Acharya.

On Monday, too, local NGOs continued their attack on the mayor for “deliberately” ignoring a historical site. “Since it was declared a heritage structure, the government should have done something about it,” said Nisith Sarkar of NGO Howrah Citizen’s Forum.