E-Paper
Government buildings in line of fire
AFTER PRIVATE multi-storey projects, the Lucknow Development Authority would now be serving notices to some five-dozen government/public buildings in the city that do not possess a no objection certificate from the fire department. Some of the prominent high-rise buildings on the hit-list include the La Place, Sahkarita Bhawan, Jawahar Bhawan, Shakti Bhawan, OCR complex, Lalbagh Officers Colony, Yojana Bhawan, Vikas Deep, Bahukhandi in Dalibagh and Bapu Bhawan.
AFTER PRIVATE multi-storey projects, the Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) would now be serving notices to some five-dozen government/public buildings in the city that do not possess a no objection certificate (NOC) from the fire department.
Some of the prominent high-rise buildings on the hit-list include the La Place, Sahkarita Bhawan, Jawahar Bhawan, Shakti Bhawan, OCR complex, Lalbagh Officers Colony, Yojana Bhawan, Vikas Deep, Bahukhandi in Dalibagh and Bapu Bhawan. “The drive to seal buildings whose owners fail to furnish the requisite NOC would commence from November 3,” said LDA vice chairman BB Singh adding that the deadline to submit the same was October 31.
“We have identified 70 more such multi-storeyed edifices majority of whom (around 60) are either government or public buildings,” said another LDA official.
He said individual notices were being served to the head of the department concerned in case of a particular government building and to the Estate Department in government group housing projects like the OCR, Bahukhandi, La Place and the Lalbagh Officers’ Colony. This takes the total number of high-rise structures that do not possess the NOC from the fire department to 250.
So who is going to ensure that these super structures are equipped with the necessary fire-fighting equipment? This is because the department that issues the NOC is itself on ‘ventilator’ as a senior fire department chose to define it.
Not surprising, therefore, that chief fire officer JK Singh says that, “Our job basically was fire-fighting. But in 2005, the authorities passed Fire Prevention Safety Act after which we were vested with the additional responsibility of fire-prevention and safety without any corresponding increase in staff or basic infrastructure to monitor the same.”
The department, he said, had served 45 notices to various government department to take necessary precautionary measures.
Prominent among them were Swasth Bhawan, SGPGI, Indira Bhawan, Vidhan Sabha etc. “Ever since the high court passed the order, we are being flooded with applications from various organisations about the fire-safety precautions/measures they need to incorporate,” he said.
The State Government has been asked to submit an action taken report by the High Court, which has fixed November 6 for next hearing in the matter.
