Gujarat : Tinder Box Tragedy And A Complicit Government
BY R.K.MISRA
Gujarat spent Rs 3,000
crore building the Statue of Unity, the tallest statue in
the world, but in
Surat 22 students died on May 24 because the fire brigade did not
have a ladder to reach the
fourth floor of a building in flames.
Considered
the commercial capital of Gujarat, Surat is the eighth largest city of India.
There are almost 14,000 people per km here and the skyline is dotted with multi
-storeyed buildings. Many lack safety standards, leading to the chilling sight
of these teenagers jumping to their deaths when a fire engulfed their coaching
centre. There was not even a netting to catch them as bystanders clicked the
sight on their mobiles, showing the criminal callousness of the government.
Chief
Minister Vijay Rupani has ordered a crackdown and warned that the guilty would
not be spared but it is his government as well as those of his predecessors, Narendra Modi and Keshubhai Patel, which are in the dock. A
perturbed National Human Rights Commission(NHRC) has suo moto taken cognizance
of the Surat tragedy and sought a detailed report from the state government
within four weeks. It could well make a beginning by asking why the 36,000
government schools in the state lack basic fire safety systems endangering the
lives of 75 lakh students.
It
goes to the credit of the Gujarat High Court that the Gujarat Fire Prevention
and Life Safety Measures Act, 2013 came into being. Thereafter, the Gujarat
Fire Services Authority was created and remains to this day an impotent,
toothless tiger. One can count the staff there on one’s finger tips and none of
them is permanent. The Authority has no equipment or manpower, no power to
purchase equipment, nor is it in a position to issue any orders. “The
Authority, for all practical purposes, remains defunct,” said advocate Amit Panchal
who has been relentlessly crusading in court in this regard. The state
government had promised the High Court in 2015 that it would fill up the
vacancies in the fire services, but to no avail. The contempt petition to force
the government to instill life into this Authority has been pending for four
years and is slated to come up before the High Court on August 28.
As
if this was not enough, the government has been regularising a rash of illegal
buildings statewide on payment of a nominal impact fee. The first such
regularisation was done by the Keshubhai Patel-led BJP government in 2000. It
had given a binding to the High Court that it would be a one-time exception,
though the date kept being extended.
Aimed
at the urban vote-bank, it was now the turn of then Chief Minister Narendra
Modi to get the assembly to pass the Gujarat Regularisation of Unauthorised
Development Act, 2011, with provisions to regularise illegal constructions by
recovering an impact fee. Though Panchal challenged the Act on behalf of his
client, the extension of deadlines for the paid regularisation continued till
well after Modi left for Delhi. The Act was passed with the 2012 assembly
elections in mind.
In
2011, an estimated 25 lakh illegal constructions existed in Gujarat. Eight
years on, the numbers would be much higher. Again, under Chief Minister Vijay
Rupani, the government got the Gujarat Land Revenue (Amendment) Bill, 2017
passed. By education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama’s own admission, this was
being done to regularise seven lakh properties built on agricultural land on
payment of prevalent fees.
It
is such illegality that has encouraged the politician-builder-bureaucrat nexus
to play havoc with people’s lives. Incidentally, the Takshshila Arcade in Surat
where 22 students, including 18 girls, lost their lives has an interesting
history. The illegal structure was regularised by paying impact fees during the
tenure of MK Das, the present principal secretary to the chief minister, when
he was the municipal commissioner of Surat. Das has, however, gone on record to
state that the municipal commissioner has no role to play in the regularisation
as the powers in this regard are delegated to the deputy municipal
commissioner, zonal officers and the executive engineer. The building in
question was regularised in 2013.
In
view of the largescale illegal commercial and residential structures in Surat,
it is no surprise that it fuels a black money economy of gargantuan
proportions. It comes as no surprise that CR Patil, the BJP MP from Navsari
near Surat who was recently re-elected with a record margin, had in March 2017
shot off a letter to the Surat Municipal Corporation asking it not to respond
to RTI queries and in fact, to blacklist those who kept seeking information
repeatedly. Interestingly, the bulk of the RTIs in Surat pertain to information
about illegal constructions.
It
was a disaster in the making. In 2001, the Surat Urban Development Authority
had approved a residential society on this land, but a wholly illegal commercial
shopping centre was constructed there in 2007. From 2012-13, two floors were
regularised under the 2011 laws, while the third floor was built illegally and
the fourth floor came up on what was a terrace. Sporting flex banners with
tyres for seating, students seeking admission to architectural and design
institutes took coaching here. The place was a virtual tinder box waiting to
explode.
The
government never learns its lessons. Just six months ago on November 26, two
children died in a fire in a coaching centre in Vesu, Surat. Chudasama was
quick to state that coaching centres would soon be asked to seek prior
permission before starting. Nothing happened. On January 30, a major fire broke
out in a building housing a coaching class in Jivraj Park, Ahmedabad. A foam
mattress shop on the ground floor caught fire and 27 students were trapped but
later rescued by fire fighters. Until the fire on May 24, not a soul had
stirred in the education department and the minister shifted blame to the
municipal corporation. In fact, the sheer callousness of the state government
can be seen from the fact that its 36,000 schools lack basic fire safety
systems, putting the lives of 75 lakh students at risk.
With
chilling pictures of students jumping to their deaths shaking the soul of India
and politicians reacting quickly, the corruption-mired administration has been
forced to get off its haunches and go into overdrive. All coaching classes,
including hobby classes, pre-school and nursery classes all over the state have
been ordered shut. As no permission was required to start these classes, there
is no record of their numbers. A back of the envelope calculation would put
their figure at 10,000 in Ahmedabad alone. All such classes have now been
ordered to seek an approval from both the municipal corporation as well as the
police commissioner in key cities and corresponding authorities in smaller
towns. In Ahmedabad, where the municipal corporation had ignored a list of some
350 unsafe classes submitted by the district education officer in January,
action has now begun.
Rupani has ordered a fire safety audit
of all commercial buildings but If only everyone had done their job, 22 young
lives would not have been so brutally snuffed out !.
Comments
Post a Comment