WHEN THE High Court here directed the Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) on September 8 to ensure that no multi-storeyed constructions were allowed to come up without procuring no objection certificate from the fire department, little would it be aware that the development regulator itself did not possess one!
Pray, what moral right does the LDA have then to tell others to practice what it does not follow itself? On September 23, the development agency published the names of 51 high-rise buildings in the State Capital asking their owners to furnish an NOC from the fire department. “Any construction work in between would be at the owner’s risk,” warned the public notice.
Would LDA apply the same rule on itself?
After all, expansion work is also in full swing at ‘Pradhikaran Bhawan’ in Gomti Nagar that houses its head quarters. What makes LDA’s case even worse than the others is the fact that the civic agency did not bother to procure an NOC when it was mandatory to do so, that is in 2000, when its office building came up. On the other hand, work on the 51 buildings in question was undertaken this year when the State Government through an amendment made the “requirement of having NOC from the fire department absolutely non essential.”
Not surprising therefore the LDA officials were tongue-tied when the question of whether or not they possessed an NOC was put to them. “I won’t be able to tell you for sure. Better ask executive engineer VN Singh, who looks the maintenance and all other work related to the office-building,” said LDA Chief Town Planner CP Sharma.
{{/usCountry}}Not surprising therefore the LDA officials were tongue-tied when the question of whether or not they possessed an NOC was put to them. “I won’t be able to tell you for sure. Better ask executive engineer VN Singh, who looks the maintenance and all other work related to the office-building,” said LDA Chief Town Planner CP Sharma.
{{/usCountry}}Singh was more candid. He admitted that the department did not possess an NOC from the fire department. “But let me tell you that we are equipping the building with all the necessary fire-prevention measures and equipment,” he said adding that this was being done on the advice of an expert in the matter from technical university in Roorkee!
Why the development agency chose to rely on Roorkee, if at all it is doing so, rather than fire department officials in the city, is something that defies logic and to which the LDA bosses had no answers.