Ludhiana: The civic body of this city hasn’t woken up to the danger of commercial establishments running out of basements even after a tragic flooding of such a place in Delhi killed three civil services aspirants recently.
Despite all the building safety rules, there remain many commercial establishments that function from the basements, and the municipal corporation is yet to come out with any concrete action against the violators.
The civic officials in Ludhiana were clueless about the state govt’s direction for a survey to identify the basements that are under illegal use for commercial reasons.
Going by the bylaws, the building plans of the commercial structures find approval only when the blueprint includes a parking space for the users’ vehicles. However, sources familiar with the local convention revealed that even though the blueprints of most of the city’s hotels and malls have marked parking lots in the basements, but leave aside a few, most of their basements are used for other purposes, which is illegal and a threat to public safety. Blocking this space also increases the parking and traffic chaos outside for the commuters.
This violation is on a large scale in the building complexes of Mall Road, Pakhowal Road, BRS Nagar, Chandigarh Road, Model Town, Model Town Extension, and Hambran Road. The residents of these neighbourhoods have asked the MC to scan the city for these unsafe buildings to avoid a Delhi-like incident.
A resident of the Civil Lines area, Rajinder Singh, said: “We have taken no lesson from the tragic incident that happened in Delhi, where some of the students preparing for IAS were stuck in a coaching centre operated from a basement when it was filled with water. Three of them could not find a way out of there and they died. For avoiding a similar tragedy, the MC should not allow the basements to be used for purposes other than parking.”
Already the former councillors and elected representatives have raised a demand that the MC should start this basement survey of the buildings. In the interest of public safety, they have asked for not tolerating any violations. However, MC’s superintending engineer Sanjay Kanwar, who has the charge of municipal town planning, said: “We have not received any directions from the govt to check the basements.”
In the year 2017-18, the civic body had launched a big campaign of inspecting the city’s commercial building to check if their basements were being used for purposes other than parking, and certain basements were then sealed, too. However, this drive was stopped after some time and, since then, the officials concerned have shut their eyes to the problem.
