New Delhi: A NGO, United Human Rights Federation (UHRF) filed a PIL in the Supreme Court seeking ‘Centralised Audit Mechanism’ for fire safety so that quarterly or yearly audit of existing buildings, malls, Schools, Colleges, government building and Courts can take place to avoid any fire incidents.
Hearing the PIL, SC has issued notice to all the states and sought reply.
“India is rapidly moving towards urbanisation by undermining the fire safety measures. The recent fire incidents across the nation have proved it. Even government offices including the Parliament House building did not comply fire safety guidelines,” said Abhay Mani Tripathi, member of the NGO UHRF, who filed the PIL.
“It is definitely a great moment for us as we are one step closer to our goal of making buildings in India fire-safe. The Hon’ble Supreme Court was no less than startled to know through our petition that even the Supreme Court building and the Parliament House did not have any Fire Safety certificates,”
The Supreme Court issued notice to the Union of India, which skirted the grave issue by saying it is not responsible but the states are. Now the states have to come forward and bear the burden of responsibility of ensuring fire-safety for all buildings, which will hopefully avoid recurrence of any unfortunate fire incidents like we have seen recently.
UHRF has been relentlessly working for uniform implementation of Fire Safety Guidelines and third party Fire Safety Audit as suggested by NBC-2016 since years.
