The tremors that shook Delhi on Monday may not have caused any damage, but with 75 per cent of the Capital being unplanned and located in the middle of a high-risk zone the city seems poised for a disaster.
Delhi sits in Seismic Zone 4, which is also called the high-damage risk zone, just a notch below the worst.
To make things worse, large parts of the national Capital have come up on floodplains or close to the Yamuna, making them more susceptible to natural disasters.
“Delhi is vulnerable to serious damage from earthquakes because of its location and the fact there are so many old structures and colonies that have come up on floodplains,” said R.C. Kehar, former chairman-cum-managing director of the National Buildings Construction Corporation.
Mr. Kehar added that with the frequency of earthquakes increasing, especially after the Nepal quake, there was a need to improve structural safety.
The municipal corporations require private construction to have a structural safety certificate from one of their empanelled engineers. But with most construction in Delhi illegal, not only do they not have the certificate, they don’t have sanction plans.
As per an ongoing case in the High Court, the corporations admitted in an affidavit that most of Delhi had come up illegally. There are a total of 1,639 unauthorised colonies in the city.
Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva said in an August 26 order that the “sum and substance” of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation’s affidavit was: “In 75 per cent of the areas, falling within the corporations of Delhi, there is no sanctioned plan and the building bye laws have not been followed.”
The order stated: “Even in 25 per cent of the area, which is said to be a planned area, there is incomplete compliance of the building bye laws.”
As per a senior South Delhi Municipal Corporation official, the civic bodies do not have adequate staff to check every building for safety, with the onus of compliance lying with the builder.
