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Blocked fire exits & bust alarms — India’s Parliament is a fire hazard

Just within the past four years, there have been at least three instances of fires in the Parliament House complex.

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New Delhi: Less than two weeks after a fire at a Delhi hotel killed 17 people and again brought to light widespread violations of fire-safety norms, ThePrint has found that the seat of India’s legislature — the sprawling Parliament House complex in the Capital — functions without a fire clearance.

Just within the past four years, there have been at least three instances of fires in the complex, although without casualties. One of them broke out in the control room of Lok Sabha TV on the evening of 31 January, two rooms away from the venue of a Union Cabinet meet scheduled for the next morning, which was Budget day.

Asked about the glaring gap in the implementation of fire safety norms at one of India’s most important buildings, managed by the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), senior officials in the Delhi Fire Service said the various changes effected in the structure over the years had turned it into a potential fire hazard.

It doesn’t help, they added, that crucial equipment on the premises don’t function, the exit routes are blocked by extra constructions, and there is a lack of personnel on the premises who are trained to deal with fires.

In violation

No building in Delhi is supposed to function if it does not comply with the fire safety norms under the Delhi Fire Service Act 2007 and the Delhi Fire Service Rules 2010.

The rules broadly state that emergency exits should not be blocked, and mandate the presence of trained personnel to fight fires. Fire safety equipment requirements vary from building to building, but the department notifies the director of the building about them.

If these are found missing during inspections, a no-objection certificate (NOC) is not issued to the building. Without an NOC, no building is allowed to function in the national capital, but this rule is mostly violated, as is evident in the case of Parliament House.

One of the senior fire officers told ThePrint that none of the problems had been addressed since they were first flagged in 2012.

“Instead, before every session, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan calls us to conduct an audit,” he added. “We repeat the same concerns, but no resolution comes through. They just tell us to provide a solution, since the session can’t be cancelled.

“But it’s the government, what can we do?” the fire service officer added.


Also read: It is not just Mumbai, most of New Delhi’s urban chic places are deadly firetraps


Faulty alarms, blocked exits

During the 2018 Budget session of the 16th Lok Sabha, the Delhi Fire Service had written to a secretariat deputy secretary, Manish Kumar Rewari, flagging the non-functional fire safety equipment on Parliament premises, including a faulty alarm system.

Delhi Fire Service’s letter to Manish Kumar Rewari | ThePrint

“The main control room fire alarm and detection panels are not functioning properly,” the letter dated 5 February 2018, a copy of which was accessed by ThePrint, reads.

“Hose reel near the BJP room number 5B is not functional,” it adds, also directing the secretariat to keep all the exits clear.

However, Rewari told ThePrint that he was not with the department concerned anymore, and refused to comment on whether the concerns had been addressed.

“The letter may be addressed to me, but I am not looking after that anymore,” he told ThePrint.

Reasserting that Parliament is “not fire safe at all”, the fire officer quoted above said, “Every year, we add new concerns to the list.”

In 2013, too, the Delhi Fire Service had written to the Lok Sabha secretariat, addressing the letter to D.S. Malha, who was then its director.

Delhi Fire Service’s letter to the Lok Sabha secretariat | ThePrint

“Most of the staircases… were found locked/inaccessible due to offices/cabins/storage almirahs,” reads the letter, which ThePrint accessed.

The department urged the secretariat to address the concerns, for the ease of evacuation during an emergency, and demanded that the temporary offices and cabins be removed with immediate effect.

The letter also flagged the emergency exit near a senior political leader’s office, saying it was inaccessible since the emergency light was not functioning.

“Even today, Sonia Gandhi’s office blocks an emergency exit,” said the senior fire officer who ThePrint spoke to, referring to another unplanned construction on the premises.

With the concerns about the safety of the current premises yet to be addressed, the Delhi Fire Service allocates a fire tender for the duration of each session to handle any emergency.

When contacted by ThePrint, the Speaker’s office said they did not have any information about the fire-safety concerns raised by the Fire Service Department, and referred the reporter to joint secretary, security, Sanjay Mittal.

Mittal’s office, however, told ThePrint that fire safety did not fall under its purview.

‘Unsafe’ Parliament

The Parliament House complex is located on Sansad Marg, and houses both the upper and lower chambers. Spread over six acres, the building was first unveiled in 1927.

The building houses offices of the employees of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats, party offices and a sprawling library. Add to this the 790 MPs who arrive in Parliament for the three annual sessions — Budget, monsoon and winter — and the potential impact of the fire-safety violations comes into sharp focus.

According to a 2017 report in Hindustan Times, the Narendra Modi government had begun looking for new sites to shift Parliament following a December 2015 letter by Speaker Mahajan to then union urban development and housing minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, in which she had requested him “to look for an alternative location as the existing building was showing ‘signs of distress and over-utilisation’”.

However, when ThePrint approached D.S. Mishra, the secretary of the ministry (since rechristened the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs) for comment, he said there was “no such proposal in my knowledge”.


Also read: Delhi hotel, where 17 died in fire, was a guest house & not allowed to run kitchens


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