Over 200 buildings are on the verge of collapse

The Walled City and its surrounding areas, including Chandni Mahal, are crowded with ‘dangerous’ buildings that may collapse at anytime.

The Walled City and its surrounding areas, including Chandni Mahal, are crowded with ‘dangerous’ buildings that may collapse at anytime.

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The MCD, though aware of the impending disaster, have always chosen to turn a blind eye to this fact.

The lackadaisical attitude of the civic agency can be gauged by the fact that its ‘dangerous building cell’, whose function is to identify dilapidated buildings in Old Delhi, has been out-of-action as most of the posts in the cell are lying vacant.

“A ‘dangerous building cell’ was constituted by the MCD commissioner in 2009 but till date apart from an assistant engineer, no one else has been hired,” said a senior MCD official.As per a survey undertaken three years back, the city zone has 200 buildings that require immediate repair work and there are 70 more in Sadar Paharganj zone.

MCD officials said there were over 70 hazardous buildings in Old Delhi that were more than 100-years-old. Of these 38 have been labelled as most dangerous including 5347, Kucha Rehman, Chandni Chowk, and 3231, Lal Darwaza, Sita Ram Bazaar.