The state government on Wednesday informed the Gujarat high court about buildings without mandatory fire NOC and Building Use (BU) permission and the numbers were shocking.
Despite repeated directions issued by the high court in last two decades, and various legislations in place to ensure fire safety, the deputy secretary of urban development and urban housing department, R H Vasava, stated on an affidavit that there are as many as 58,000 buildings across the state which do not have valid fire NOC as on date.
These buildings either do not have proper fire prevention and protection systems installed, or they have not renewed their fire NOCs if obtained in the past after installation of fire safety systems.
The affidavit also revealed that there are total 33,274 buildings in the state which do not have BU permissions. Of them, 25,910 buildings exist in municipalities; 1,489 structures in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC); 2,335 in Surat civic body area; 1,009 in Vadodara and 1,640 in Rajkot city.
The state government placed these details before the HC in response to a PIL filed by advocate Amit Panchal, who has sought action against those responsible for the fire tragedy in the Shrey Hospital, in which eight Covid-19 patients had lost their lives in August last year.
The lawyer had also demanded proper implementation of the fire safety laws. The government had also expressed its intention to amend the newly implemented Fire Safety Act.
Following this litigation, the high court had been directing the civic authorities to strictly implement fire safety norms in hospitals and even issued guidelines for ICUs in Covid hospitals. The government’s report said that the city of Ahmedabad has fared well with only six hospitals still to obtain fire NOC, and all the schools in the city have obtained fire NOC. But the city still has got 15,317 factories and industrial units without fire NOC. This is after some major fire incidents reported in industrial areas around the city.
