Bhandup fire: BMC records show OC was given by delinking mall’s issues

Firefighters and other agencies have managed to rescue 68 patients from the blaze-ravaged Sunrise Hospital in Bhandup and shift them to other hospitals. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

The fire that broke out at Bhandup's Dreams Mall late on Thursday night has brought to the fore a number of violations that happened in the process of the Sunrise Hospital - running on the third floor of the building - securing a provisional Occupation Certificate (OC) from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Records show that the civic body had issued the OC by delinking all the issues pertaining to the mall to get the hospital started in view of the pandemic.

When the hospital authorities submitted an application to the BMC for the OC in April last year, the architects had demanded that the issues of the mall - non-payment of property tax, illegal and unauthorised work - should be delinked to allow running of the hospital.

According to BMC records, the application was made by Nikita Trehan, daughter of Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan, executive chairman of HDIL (owners of the mall). The proposal had clearly mentioned that all the issues related to the mall should be delinked and specific permission be given to the hospital only.

Long-pending plan

However, civic sources said that the plan to set up the hospital had been initiated in 2014 but permissions were not given earlier owing to various problems in the mall. But considering the pandemic, the civic body had to go ahead with the plan and give the permissions.

The fire brigade declared it a Level Four fire. Pic/Sameer Markande

"The plan to set up the hospital inside the mall is a long-pending one but due to various issues it got stalled. Due to the pandemic it was approved last year," said Bhalchandra Shirsat, BJP leader.

"In view of the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic, all hospitals need to be mobilised. Therefore to keep one hospital specially for health and frontline workers, this Occupation Certificate (provisional) is limited to only hospital premises situated at third (part) floor in the commercial building, by delinking all the issues in the project as a whole based on directions received and further on approval granted by the commissioner," read the provisional OC document.

However, the hospital in a statement has said that they were functioning with all due compliances like fire licence, nursing home licence etc.

Further, according to the reports accessed by mid-day, permission for a permanent OC was still pending with the Building Proposal department. The BMC said that the hospital authorities had approached them for it in October last year.

Non-compliance

After the fire at the City Centre Mall at Mumbai Central last year, a fire audit of about 71 malls had been done, out of which 29 were given notices for non-compliance or shortcomings in fire safety precautions. Dreams Mall was one of the buildings where fire safety violations had been found.

Local corporator, Sakshi Dalvi had complained about it twice to the local ward office and had mentioned that fire could break out in the building at any moment. Dalvi had written the letters on October 2 and November 2, 2020, to the local ward office.

"The mall had been facing problems related to electricity and water supply, so how did they give permission to run a hospital in such a place? I had also warned about the risk of a fire at the place as it was in a bad shape. When the hospital was started I wrote a letter to the local ward office highlighting several issues the mall was facing but nothing was done about it," she said.

Last year, the Mumbai Fire Brigade had served a notice to Dreams Mall in November for violating fire safety norms. Fire brigade officials said that if they had complied with the norms, then the lives could have been saved. "We had served a notice to Dreams Malls for non-compliance of fire safety norms. We are now focusing on extinguishing the fire completely and later we will investigate the matter in depth," said Hemant Parab, deputy chief fire officer, Mumbai Fire Brigade.

As per the provision of the Maharashtra Fire Safety and Life Measures Act, the mall had been given 120 days to comply with the norms. However, the mall did not submit a compliance report, said a senior fire brigade official.

7 lakh
No. of recent fire audits of malls

29
No. of malls that got notices over poor compliance