30 Gurugram liquor shops without fire safety nod to be given notice: Officials

Gurugram: The Gurugram fire department has identified at least 30 liquor shops and their warehouses across the city which do not have a valid fire NOC (no objection certificate), said the officials on Thursday. This comes after a massive fire gutted a liquor shop on Golf Course Road on Monday (May 2) afternoon.

According to the officials, the fire department has been compiling a list of such liquor shops and their warehouses, and will soon issue a notice to the owners, asking them to procure a NOC from the department, otherwise the structures will be sealed and legal action will be initiated against them.

“Following the fire at the liquor shop-cum-warehouse on Golf Course Road, we examined our records to verify liquor shops and warehouses which have a valid fire NOC. So far, at least 30 such establishments do not possess a valid NOC, and we are in the process of issuing notices to their owners,” said Gulshan Kalra, deputy director (technical) of Haryana Fire and Emergency Services.

Kalra, who also heads the Gurugram fire department, said that “several liquor shops and warehouses in Vikas Marg, Southern Peripheral Road (SPR), and sectors 17, 18 and 40 among others do not have a valid fire NOC”.

There are over 200 liquor shops in Gurugram, said the excise department officials, adding that according to the fire department, almost all these shops have warehouses.

On May 2, one L1 (the term used for a wholesale licence) liquor shop on Golf Course Road was almost gutted in fire around noon. Three fire tenders were deployed to douse the fire, and the firefighters were successful in preventing the fire from spreading to the warehouse, where most of the liquor bottles were stored, said the officials.

As per the Haryana Fire Service Act, 2009, a fire NOC for any commercial or residential building in the state is valid for only one year, which many experts say is a “major issue”.

“In Delhi, a fire NOC for commercial buildings is valid for three years and five years for residential buildings. However, it is valid for only one year in Haryana. Verifying a firefighting system, building layouts, and issuance of NOC is a time-consuming process. The heavily understaffed fire departments in Haryana are thus not able to keep a comprehensive check on NOCs for liquor shops, endangering lives in the process,” said SK Dheri, former chief of Delhi Fire Service, who also headed a private fire service in Gurugram till 2017.

Dheri also said that apart from increasing the validity period of a fire NOC, the Haryana fire service should also opt for a third-party audit of all fire NOCs in Gurugram as the process is much swifter and streamlined, and issue a NOC based on the findings. He said that for issuing a fire NOC, the fire department officials should first check whether the current layout of a building is similar to the one for which the building plan was approved by the department concerned. It must also be checked that there are no encroachments near the entry and exit gates, and a building has basic firefighting equipment such as smoke detectors, extinguishers, sprinklers, sand buckets, and hydrants among others.