The Parliament complex is among several iconic colonial-era buildings technically bereft of fire safety owing to “procedural lacunae” and, ironically, their very history. A Delhi Fire Service (DFS) source said the 88-year-old structure did not fall within the purview of the State-wide fire safety norms.
“The Parliament complex was among several structures assessed in terms of fire safety by the DFS in 2013 and had led us to recommend guidelines to make it safer in terms of a fire-related contingency,” a source said, adding that the building predated the Delhi Fire Safety Rules by close to a century.
“However, while a few of these were implemented, others, which dealt with slight structural modifications and renovation, have not been carried out over the last two years,” the source said.
A senior Delhi Government official said the Parliament complex had been declared unfit in terms of fire safety by the DFS, which reports to its Home Department, in 2011. This had preceded the first assessment of its safety readiness by the DFS.
This, however, was followed by a lack of consensus with the implementation of the safety recommendations by representatives across political parties. “In fact, a Right to Information application had revealed that the Parliament complex had not received a fire safety certificate in the last decade,” a government official said.
“There are so many agencies and so many levels of ownership when it comes to such historical buildings that even routine activities like fire safety assessments become too difficult to carry out,” the source said.
A senior DFS official said Sunday’s fire seemed to have been triggered due to negligence on part of maintenance personnel working in the vicinity of an air-conditioning plant housing transformers with a welding machine.
