NEW DELHI: A day after the massive blaze at a commercial building in northwest Delhi’s Mundka, the North MCD, under whose jurisdiction the area falls, in its preliminary report said that the reason behind the incident can be a short-circuit. The civic body also ordered the department to ask all such units to procure valid licenses and Non-Objection Certificates (NOCs) within seven days.
Sanjay Goel, North MCD commissioner on Saturday issued an order to the civic body’s factory licensing department that to prevent such “unfortunate” incidents in the future, the factory owners will be given seven days to get new factory licenses online or get them renewed along with fire NOCs and upload them online.
According to the Delhi Fire Services chief Atul Garg, the four-story commercial building that caught fire did not have a fire NOC and MCD clearance.
“The entire building comes across as illegal,” said Garg. According to the civic officials, the businesses on the first, second and third floors of the said that the owners of the building, two brothers identified by the police as — Varun Goel and Harish Goel, are “absconding”.
“The Goel brothers rented the three floors in 2018, 2019 and 2021, respectively. Prior to 2018, the building, which was constructed in 2012 was rented by a car showroom for some time and later it remained vacant for some time,” said an official.
He added that the building was in Lal Dora land, which allows mix use of public land. “There are many such godowns and other units running in this area without valid licenses,” the official said.
“We have asked the department to give seven days time to owners/ tenants of commercial buildings to get valid licenses and fire NOCs. Action will be taken against those not complying,” said Goel.
“This exercise must be completed within 15 days,” the order read. Goel has also in a separate order directed the zonal head of the area to submit a “detailed enquiry report” on how the building was running and if it had valid licenses. The enquiry will also find out whether the building plan was sanctioned or not.