The Ministry of Steel has set up the Steel Industry Safety Council (SISC) as an apex level body to improve safety standards and accident prevention across Indian steel plants. The Council will be chaired by Steel Secretary Sandeep Poundrik. The move follows the fatal molten steel explosion at the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant in June 2026 and comes as India expands capacity as the world’s second largest steel producer.
What Is the Steel Industry Safety Council?
The Steel Industry Safety Council is an apex level body set up by the Ministry of Steel to set common safety standards, share best practices and prevent accidents in steel plants. The Ministry of Steel is the nodal ministry for steel policy and growth in India.
The term apex level means that the Council sits at the top of the safety system for the sector. It will not run any single plant. It will guide all plants on what minimum safety rules to follow, how to report accidents, and how to learn from each incident. The focus is on uniform practices for both large integrated plants and smaller units.
The Council will be chaired by Sandeep Poundrik, the Secretary in the Ministry of Steel. Poundrik, a 1993 batch officer of the Bihar cadre, took charge as Steel Secretary in August 2024. The Ministry of Steel is headed by Union Minister H. D. Kumaraswamy (as of October 2026), assisted by a Minister of State. The Secretary is the senior most civil servant in the ministry and leads policy execution, coordination with public sector units, and review of production and safety performance.
Why Was the Safety Council Needed?
The Ministry of Steel announced the Council against the background of repeated fatal accidents in steel plants. Steel making involves molten metal at very high heat, heavy cranes, toxic gases, high voltage systems and heavy material handling. A small failure in handling, maintenance or training can cause multiple deaths at once.
The immediate trigger was the explosion at the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited Visakhapatnam Steel Plant in Andhra Pradesh on 8 June 2026. A ladle carrying about 150 tonnes of molten steel at around 1500 to 1600 degrees Celsius exploded at the Steel Melt Shop unit while the metal was being moved by crane. The blast and the spill of hot metal killed 10 workers, including permanent employees and contract workers, and injured several others. The plant suspended 22 officers and workers after an internal inquiry and ordered an external expert probe. Relief of ₹2 lakh for each death and ₹50,000 for the injured was announced from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund.
This was not an isolated event. The same plant saw 16 deaths in June 2012 in an oxygen plant blast. Data placed before Parliament for public sector plants of the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and RINL for 2013 to 2015 listed regular fatal and reportable accidents each year. Common causes reported were fall from height, gas poisoning, electrocution, burn injury and fire or explosion. Private sector data is not maintained centrally because steel is a deregulated sector, so the full national count is not fully captured.
| Common Hazard in Steel Plants | How It Causes Harm |
|---|---|
| Molten metal and slag handling | Ladle failure, leakage or explosion can cause severe burns |
| Blast furnace and coke oven gases | Leakage can cause poisoning and suffocation |
| Machinery and crane movement | Material handling failure can cause crushing injuries |
| Electrical systems | High voltage exposure can cause electrocution |
| Work at height and construction work | Falls during maintenance and project work can be fatal |
Studies of the sector have also pointed to weak safety enforcement. Factory inspection data compiled by the Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes (DGFASLI) and the Labour Bureau have often not matched, which points to gaps in accident reporting. Nearly half of the sanctioned posts in DGFASLI were vacant as of 2023. The Council is therefore meant to close the gap between written guidelines and actual practice on the shop floor.
How Will the Council Improve Safety in Steel Plants?
The core job of the Steel Industry Safety Council is accident prevention through common standards. An accident prevention protocol is a fixed step by step method to identify a danger, control it, train workers for it, and review the result after every shift or incident. The Council is expected to make such protocols uniform so that a worker moving from Bhilai to Bokaro or from a public sector plant to a private plant finds the same basic safety discipline.
The Council builds on work already done by the Ministry of Steel. In 2019 and 2020 the ministry held detailed talks with industry, associations and academic experts and formed a Working Group of experts. This led to 25 Safety Guidelines for the Iron and Steel Sector, released as a book in February 2020. These cover minimum safety benchmarks for specific activities and hazards faced by both large and small producers. In July 2024 the ministry released a second volume with 16 process based guidelines, including 4 on workplace safety and 12 on specific iron and steel making processes. These were finalised after reviews chaired at Joint Secretary and Secretary level, including a meeting on 21 May 2024. The new Council will push for full adoption of these guidelines and track compliance.
In practical terms, the Council will focus on three risk areas that plant records flag most often. The first is machinery safety, which covers guards on moving parts, lockout during maintenance, crane and ladle fitness checks, and strict maintenance schedules. The second is material handling safety, which covers movement of hot metal, slag, scrap, coils and heavy loads by crane, truck and conveyor. The third is safety technologies, which include gas detectors, heat sensors, automatic alarms, CCTV monitoring of melt shops, and digital tracking of near misses. The Ministry of Steel is already promoting artificial intelligence and digital tools to cut costs and improve monitoring, and the same tools can give early warning of gas leaks, overheating or equipment fatigue.
What Is a Steel Plant and How Does It Work?
A steel plant is an industrial facility that converts iron ore, scrap and coal based inputs into iron and then into steel for construction, railways, defence and machines. It uses high heat furnaces to remove impurities from iron and add small amounts of carbon and alloys to make strong steel.
A modern plant works in clear stages. First, iron is produced in a blast furnace using iron ore, coke and limestone, or in a Direct Reduced Iron unit using iron ore and gas or coal. India leads the world in Direct Reduced Iron output with more than half of global share. The hot metal then goes to the Steel Melt Shop, where it is refined in converters or electric furnaces and adjusted for grade. The liquid steel is cast into slabs, billets or blooms, which are then rolled into flat products like hot rolled and cold rolled coils and long products like bars, rods and rails. Auxiliary units like power plants, oxygen plants and water systems support the main flow, and each stage carries fire, gas, electrical and mechanical risks that need separate controls.
India has two broad plant types. Integrated steel plants handle the full chain from iron ore to finished steel and account for about 55 percent of finished steel output. Major names include SAIL, Tata Steel, JSW Steel, Jindal Steel and Power, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited and ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India. Mini steel plants and processing units use electric arc furnaces, induction furnaces, sponge iron units, re rolling and coating units and account for about 45 percent of output. The ministry guidelines apply to both types, as well as to project and construction activity inside steel works. Mining is excluded because mines are governed separately under mines law and the Directorate General of Mines Safety.
How Many Steel Plants Are in India?
India does not have a single count of steel plants because the sector includes a few large integrated plants and hundreds of mini units and processors. Production is tracked by capacity and output rather than plant numbers, with crude capacity of about 222 million tonnes as of June 2026.
The large public sector base is concentrated in a few states. The Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), a central public sector enterprise under the Ministry of Steel, operates integrated plants at Bhilai in Chhattisgarh, Bokaro in Jharkhand, Durgapur and Burnpur (IISCO) in West Bengal, Rourkela in Odisha, Salem in Tamil Nadu and Chandrapur in Maharashtra, along with special units. Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, which runs the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant in Andhra Pradesh, is the other major public sector producer. At independence in 1947 India had only three steel plants, namely the Tata Iron and Steel Company, the Indian Iron and Steel Company and Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Limited, plus a few electric arc furnace units.
| Major Integrated Plant | State | Operator Type |
|---|---|---|
| Bhilai Steel Plant | Chhattisgarh | Public sector, SAIL |
| Bokaro Steel Plant | Jharkhand | Public sector, SAIL |
| Durgapur Steel Plant and IISCO Burnpur | West Bengal | Public sector, SAIL |
| Rourkela Steel Plant | Odisha | Public sector, SAIL |
| Visakhapatnam Steel Plant | Andhra Pradesh | Public sector, RINL |
| Jamshedpur, Kalinganagar, Hazira and Dolvi units | Jharkhand, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra | Private sector, Tata Steel, AMNS, JSW |
Private producers led by Tata Steel, JSW Steel, Jindal Steel and Power and ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India hold a large share of output, with the top five firms accounting for 40 to 45 percent of domestic production. The remaining output comes from secondary producers in clusters in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra. This wide spread is one reason the Council must work as a national umbrella rather than a plant level committee.
Domestic Steel Industry Profile and Production Data
The steel industry in India is the backbone of infrastructure, housing, railways, automobiles and defence goods. India became the world’s second largest producer of crude steel in 2018 and has held that rank since then, behind only China. The share of India in world crude output rose from 5.2 percent in 2014 to 7.9 percent in 2024, and the country is also the second largest consumer of finished steel.
Recent data shows strong momentum. Crude steel output in 2025-26 was about 168.4 million tonnes, a growth of more than 10.7 percent over the previous year. Finished steel consumption reached about 163.7 million tonnes in 2025-26, up from about 77 million tonnes in 2014-15. Total domestic crude capacity stood at about 220 to 222 million tonnes in 2025-26. April to May 2026 alone saw 28 million tonnes of crude output and 27.4 million tonnes of finished steel output.
| Indicator | Recent Level |
|---|---|
| Crude steel production 2025-26 | About 168.4 million tonnes, up 10.7 percent |
| Finished steel consumption 2025-26 | About 163.7 million tonnes |
| Crude capacity June 2026 | About 222 million tonnes per annum |
| Global rank | Second largest producer and consumer |
| Capacity target | 300 million tonnes by 2030, 500 million tonnes by 2047 |
Policy is pushing this expansion forward. The National Steel Policy 2017 set a goal of 300 million tonnes of capacity by 2030. The government is now working on a new National Steel Policy with a road map to 2047 linked to the Viksit Bharat goal, with focus on competitiveness, technology upgrade, artificial intelligence and decarbonisation. Support measures include the Production Linked Incentive scheme for speciality steel launched in 2021, a proposed ₹5,000 crore linked scheme to cut emissions, and a green steel road map with ₹455 crore for pilot projects till 2029-30. Quality Control Orders for steel products and Mission Coking Coal to cut import dependence are other parts of the same strategy. Rapid growth in output and construction makes a single national safety framework more urgent, because more production means more workers exposed to high risk operations.
Industrial Safety Framework in India
Industrial safety in India means the laws, institutions and shop floor practices that protect workers from injuries, diseases and fatal accidents. A factory is governed by safety, health and welfare rules on working hours, protective gear, machine guarding, hazardous processes and reporting of accidents. Steel plants add an extra layer of risk because of molten metal, gases and heavy loads, so they need sector specific rules over and above general factory law.
The broad national body is the National Safety Council of India. The Council was set up by the Ministry of Labour on 4 March 1966 after the President’s first Conference on Industrial Safety in December 1965 and the Labour Ministers Conference proposal. It is an autonomous, non profit society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, with headquarters at CBD Belapur, Navi Mumbai. Its goal is to build a voluntary movement on Safety, Health and Environment. It organises the National Safety Day campaign each March, runs training, audits and the National Safety Aptitude Test, and gives Safety Awards to industry. It became a founder member of the Asia Pacific Occupational Safety and Health Organization in 1985. The new Steel Industry Safety Council is sector specific and will work within this wider ecosystem, not replace it.
Enforcement and technical advice come mainly from the Directorate General Occupational Safety and Health, earlier known as DGFASLI. The office was set up in 1945 in Mumbai to advise central and state governments on factory law and to coordinate inspection. It runs the Central Labour Institute in Mumbai and Regional Labour Institutes in Chennai, Kanpur, Kolkata, Faridabad and Shillong, along with dock safety inspectorates in major ports. It helps frame rules for major accident hazards and trains inspectors, safety officers and worker representatives.
The legal base has recently changed. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 received assent on 28 September 2020 and replaces 13 central labour laws with one code. It cuts 620 sections to 143 sections and simplifies registration, licences, returns and filings. It requires a safety committee in every factory with 500 or more workers and provides for Inspector cum Facilitators, third party audits and site appraisal committees for hazardous units. The Code was brought into enforcement from 21 November 2025. For steel, the sector level Joint Committee on Safety, Health and Environment in the Steel Industry already exists as an industry forum. The Steel Industry Safety Council will now give this structure an apex push from the Ministry of Steel, with clearer power to set benchmarks, review accidents and spread safe technology across integrated and mini plants.
Key Takeaways
- The Steel Industry Safety Council was set up by the Ministry of Steel as an apex body for safety standards and accident prevention in the steel sector.
- The Council is chaired by Steel Secretary Sandeep Poundrik, who took charge in August 2024 as a 1993 batch Bihar cadre officer.
- The Visakhapatnam Steel Plant explosion on 8 June 2026 killed 10 workers when a ladle with about 150 tonnes of molten steel exploded.
- India is the world’s second largest producer of crude steel since 2018, with output of about 168.4 million tonnes in 2025-26.
- The Ministry of Steel issued 25 safety guidelines in February 2020 and 16 process based guidelines in July 2024 for the iron and steel sector.
- The National Safety Council of India was set up on 4 March 1966 by the Ministry of Labour and is headquartered at CBD Belapur, Navi Mumbai.
