Parts of Hotel Arpit Palace, which was gutted in a fire on Tuesday, were demolished by municipal corporation authorities on at least 11 occasions while it was being constructed in 1993, official records state.
The blaze at the hotel, located in north Delhi’s Karol Bagh, claimed the lives of 17 people.
The building was booked for various violations on at least five occasions between June 1993 and January 1994, following which the demolition action was carried out by the then unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
Violations on each floor
According to official records submitted before the Standing Committee of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation on Friday, violations were found and fined on each floor of the building, including the basement.
The violations included unauthorised constructions such as basement in an open area, ground floor and additional alteration, columns on the first and third floor, roofs on the second, third, fourth and fifth floors, unauthorised coverage of the first and second floor, pillars and shuttering, reinforcement of the overhead tank and the lift room on the sixth floor, the records state.
The demolition work included removal of the wall and roof of the ground floor on multiple occasions, removal of partition walls and shuttering in the basement, demolition of columns and walls on the third floor.
Stay order was also shown and the work was stopped on multiple occasions, records state.
Congress Councillor Mukesh Goel demanded to know why the building was allowed to come up despite being flagged on multiple occasions.
Aam Aadmi Party councillor Vikas Goel said nothing was being done by the corporation.
“The local junior engineer or the public health inspector will be suspended and nothing much will happen,” said Mr. Vikas.
A senior corporation official informed the committee that an enquiry into the fire, which was under way, would be looking at lapses that led to the incident.
It will also look into measures that can be taken to avoid a similar situation, said the official.
