As part of its efforts to check incidents of fire and building collapse, Delhi Government is planning to deny permanent water and electricity connections to those buildings that fail to obtain completion and fire safety certificate from authorities concerned. Instead, these buildings will be only given temporary certificates but will have to pay electricity and water rates, three times higher than the existing rates.
All these structural safety guidelines were discussed at a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary SK Srivastava recently, officials said. This meeting was called after Delhi’s Divisional Commissioner (Revenue) Dharampal wrote to the Urban Development Department and civic agencies, seeking a techno-legal framework for regulating and monitoring all construction activities.
As per data available with the Revenue Department, over 1 lakh fires were reported during the past five years resulting in more than 1,950 deaths and injuries to more than 11,600 people in Delhi. Most incidents took place either in unauthorised colonies or in slum areas.
“These guidelines were being discussed in view of the recent incidents of fire and building collapse. There is a need for a techno-legal framework for regulation and monitoring of all construction activity so as to ensure that all built-up structures comply with minimum standards laid down for structural and fire safety,” said officials. Further they said that there is a need to create awareness about fire safety norms and penalty should be imposed on those who flout rules.
“This will be on the lines of Hyderabad and Greater Noida. In Hyderabad, there are penalty provisions existing in water and electricity tariff and property taxes for unsafe constructions in the form of exorbitantly high tariffs which are deterrent.Similarly in Greater Noida only licenced builders are allowed to do constructions explicitly following the provisions of building bylaws, violation of which attracts cancellation of builder’s licence,” the minutes of the meeting read.
Dharampal had earlier written to the MCDs stating that no building should be allowed to be constructed sans proper building plans and fire safety norms. The buildings must be constructed in consonance with the building bylaws and should be linked with minimum standard of fire safety norms. Currently, building bylaws are not linked with fire safety norms.
In a letter, the Divisional Commissioner (Revenue) said local bodies should insist upon mandatory display of sanctioned building plan at the construction site and if no such plan is displayed, any authorised official (either from a local body or local police) should be authorised to stop further construction. “A rigorous enforcement mechanism is required to be developed in order to ensure that all existing and new construction activities positively comply with the structural and fix fire safety provisions in a legally enforceable manner,” the letter said.