‘Rules were flouted while issuing fire certificate’
DELHI HOTEL TRAGEDY
NEW DELHI: At least 15 guest houses and restaurants in Karol Bagh, including Cross Road Bar & Restaurant at Aprit Palace hotel where 17 people were killed in a blaze on February 12, were granted fire clearance certificates through a breach of protocol and bypassing of procedures, government documents accessed by HT show.
The officer who carried out the safety inspection and recommended that the establishment be granted licences, deputy chief fire officer (DCFO) of the Delhi Fire Services (DFS) Rajesh Panwar, was posted in the New Delhi zone in 2016 when the clearances were given even though the Karol Bagh is under the jurisdiction of department’s south zone.
In addition, inspections were carried out within one to five days of the applications being received from the guest houses, the chain of command was broken with the inspection reports sent directly to the director of DFS instead of the chief fire officer of the region, and clearances were granted within a week instead of the usual process that takes a minimum of 20 to 25 days.
The director of DFS at the time was GC Mishra, who holds the post to this day.
Cross Road Bar & Restaurant at Aprit Palace, where the fire broke out because of a short circuit, was found by a government inspection report submitted on February 15 to not have a panic alarm, no functional fire safety equipment, staff untrained to handle fire accidents, and a locked fire exit during the time of the February 12 incident. The owner of the hotel, Rakesh Goel, was arrested on February 16 and is in police custody.
According to documents accessed by HT, the restaurant applied for a fire clearance on May 9, 2016; the inspection was conducted by Panwar on May 18, and sent for approval directly to the director of DFS.
The inspection signature in the report was Panwar’s and the final clearance certificate was signed by Mishra on May 20. HT has a copy of the report.
The regular process is that buildings which apply for fire clearances are usually inspected by an assistant divisional officer of that zone. The report is then forwarded to the divisional officer, who sends it to the DCFO, and then to the chief fire officer, who finally passes the file to the director for clearance.
The documents also show that for two of the 15 clearances granted by Panwar in Karol Bagh, inspection was conducted on the same day the application for clearance was filed by the guest houses. In four cases, the inspection date on the file is the day after the date of application. Fire officials said that an inspection is normally carried out after a minimum of two weeks from when the application is filed.
When asked about the discrepancies, Panwar dismissed the allegations and said that he was “assigned the task of inspecting the properties by seniors”. “What is the harm in conducting an inspection? The file was marked to me and I did my job,” he told HT.
The fire chief, Mishra, said there was “nothing unusual” in the process followed in providing clearances to these restaurants and guest houses. He added that it was “possible that the concerned official was on leave or was overloaded with work” and the case got transferred to the official of the other zone.
But former fire chief SK Dheri said the sequence of events was highly irregular. When an application of clearance is filed, it first comes to the DFS headquarters, from where it is transferred to the respective zones for clearance, he added.
“If there is proof of protocol being ignored and inspections and clearances being issued in a short period, then action should be taken against the officials. If responsibility can be fixed in the Uphaar case, then it can be fixed here too,” Dheri said, referring to the 1997 fire at Delhi’s Uphaar cinema that killed 59 people.
Delhi home minister Satyendar Jain could not be reached for comments despite several calls and text messages.