Delhi fire department to propose audit of coaching centres following Mukherjee Nagar incident

The development comes a day after the Delhi high court took suo motu cognisance of a blaze at a coaching centre in north Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar.

Two days after a blaze at a coaching centre in north Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar resulted in the injury of 61 students, Delhi Fire Services (DFS) officers on Saturday said that they are likely to approach the state government to conduct a fire safety audit of coaching institutes across the Capital.

The coaching centre where massive fire was gutted at Mukherjee Nagar in New Delhi on Thursday. (Sanchit Khanna/HT PHOTO)

The development comes a day after the Delhi high court took suo motu cognisance of the fire, and asked authorities to examine the safety status of such institutes and file a report by July 3, the next date of hearing.

The fire at the five-storey Bhandari House, at Batra Complex in Mukherjee Nagar, left 61 students injured while hundreds on the upper floors were forced to rappel down with the help of ropes and cables in a desperate bid to escape. Police said an initial probe suggested there were over 500 students in the building at the time of the blaze, although half of them were in the basement and managed to escape soon after the fire began.

DFS officers on Saturday said senior officers, including DFS chief Atul Garg, are likely to hold a meeting with the Delhi government’s home department on Monday to discuss the directions issued by the high court and decide a further course of action.

“As per the existing rules, coaching centres are not kept under the purview needing to obtain no-objection certificates (NOC) from the fire department and licences from other relevant agencies, unlike restaurants and hotels. Time and again, and whenever there are any serious fire incidents involving coaching centres in India, there have been discussions on bringing educational institutes under the same rules in Delhi. However, the guidelines are still lacking,” said a fire department officer, who asked not to be named.

Another fire department official, who declined to be named, said, “The high court’s order will be examined, and we will act accordingly. Since we are supposed to file a status and action taken report, we want to update the court with some substantial steps, which may include issuing fire safety guidelines to coaching centres in Delhi, which we estimate are over 5,000 in number.”

To be sure, the two coaching centres in the building where the fire broke out on Thursday afternoon did not have sufficient firefighting arrangements to prevent incidents of fire in case of such blazes. The fire extinguishers kept there were not working, the police said on Friday.

Separately, the Delhi Police on Saturday recorded the statement of 30 students who survived the fire incident, taking the total number of students who have given their statements to investigators, to 40.

Jitendra Meena, deputy commissioner of police (northwest), said, “We are in the process of collecting ownership documents of all the floors of the building and also of the tenants who are running their businesses there. The documents will be examined, and further legal action will be taken accordingly. So far, we have recorded the statement of 40 students. A decision regarding the recreation and 3D mapping of the building will be taken at a later stage.”