Explosives Act, 1884

3. Chronology of the establishment set up

• First Branch Office of the Department was opened in Pune in 1925 and then Chief started discharging his duties with the help of one Inspector each at Calcutta and Pune.
• By 1938, the Department had further extended to four Circle Offices at Lahore , Chennai, Calcutta and Mumbai, with Head Office at Calcutta .  Subsequently a Central Circle Office was opened at Nagpur , which was later shifted to Gwalior .
• The Head office was also shifted time to time from Shimla to Calcutta , Calcutta to New Delhi and  after independence from New Delhi to Nagpur . The present Head office is at Nagpur.
• During partition of India and Pakistan, the office at Lahore was shifted to Agra. 
• One sub-circle office at Gomia was started in 1958, due to the start of the first high explosives manufacturing factory(ICI Ltd) in the country.
• Sub-circle offices at Asansol (West Bengal) and Sivakasi (Tamil Nadu) came into existence by that time.
• A new Sub-Circle office at Hyderabad was opened on 02.12.1968 and a Sub-Circle office Guwahati for the North-Eastern States was started in 1973.
• A Sub-Circle office at Hazaribagh and Pay & Accounts Office at Nagpur were opened in 1976.
• In 1979-80, a Sub-Circle office at Bhandara was opened due to Commissioning of Commercial High Explosives plant of the Ordinance Factory Bhandara, Maharashtra.
• The first re-organization of the department was completed in the two years 1980-81 and 1981-82 by opening of Sub-Circle offices at Rourkela, Manglore, Ernakulam, Baroda, Chandigarh, Bhopal and Jaipur.  The Central Circle office at Gwalior was abolished.
• The major re-organisation of the Department was sanctioned in 1995 by increasing the strength of Group-A Technical Officers from 67 to 151. New Circle office viz. North Circle office at Faridabad (near New Delhi) and Sub-Circle office at Allahabad and the Central Testing  Station at Gondkhairi, Nagpur  for better functioning of the Department.
• At present the Department, apart from the Head Office (and Central Testing Station) at Nagpur, has 5 Circle offices and 18 Sub-Circle/Factory attached offices.