For four months, Delhi government HQ was a fire-trap

New Delhi: After a major fire broke out at the Maharashtra secretariat in Mumbai, reports emerged to show that several safety measures were flouted in the building premises.

Now NDTV has learnt that fire safety rules at the Delhi secretariat were also compromised for a period of time. In fact, the building's fire safety certificate was suspended for four months this year.

An investigation was carried out by the fire department of Delhi in December last year which showed that basic fire safety measures were missing in the building.

Most of the smoke sensors in the ten floored building were defunct.

The main water pipeline in the building had burst, which rendered all the fire fighting equipment that use water useless. None of the sprinklers, hose drills and water hydrants could be used.

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Also the staircase pressurisation was not at the optimum level. This is essentially maintained so that in case of a fire accident, staircases are not smoked out, and there is no disturbance for those who are evacuating the building.

After completing their probe, the fire department initially issued a notice and then suspended the No Objection Certificate (NOC) issued to the building authorities on December 30 last year.

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The Public Works Department (PWD), which also has its headquarters in the Secretariat, had no option but to take action. But it took them four months to fulfill the requirements.

Sources tell NDTV that a lot of time was used up in fixing the main water pipeline, and the connecting lines throughout the building. Also, the smoke detecting panels were imported from Singapore, which also took time to arrive and fix on all the floors.

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Finally the NOC was re-issued to the Delhi secretariat on May 4 this year.

The Delhi secretariat is located at the heart of the city in ITO, and houses important government offices including that of the chief minister and all the state ministries.

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Interestingly, all this came about, after a visit by the fire chief to the building. Delhi fire chief AK Sharma was visiting the secretariat for a meeting when he noticed that there were certain fire safety measures missing. He asked for a thorough check soon after.