Gurugram: Fire officials took bribe to certify five towers of Orris Aster Court Premier as safe

GURUGRAM: Three fire department officials responsible for key inspections that determine whether a building is safe to live in allegedly took bribes to certify five residential towers of Orris Aster Court Premier — an upscale condominium in the city’s Sector 85 — in 2020.

A probe by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has indicted the three officials for the irregularities, once again underlining the concern the Supreme Court expressed in its landmark judgment ordering the demolition of the Noida twin towers of collusion between officials and developers.

The MCG began the probe after a group of residents of the society approached the chief minister with a complaint against then assistant divisional fire officer (ADFO) Satyawan Samriwal in June last year. The five towers together have around 240 flats, of which less than 100 are currently occupied.

MCG commissioner Mukesh Ahuja has now written to the director general of fire and emergency services, Panchkula, recommending departmental action against Samriwal and two fire station officers, Ramesh and Rajbir Singh, under the Haryana Civil Services (Punishment and Appeal) Rules, 2016.

According to the MCG probe report, Samriwal and the two others mentioned the presence of two staircases in each of these five towers in the project — 4A, 3K, 3L, 3M and 3N — whereas only one staircase was constructed by the developer.

When questioned by senior officials, Samriwal tried to clarify that as per the National Building Code 2005, only one staircase was required and the two had been wrongly mentioned due to clerical mistakes. However, the senior officials clarified to him that as per the Act, a minimum of two staircases are required for multi-storey buildings of height more than 15 metres. And the towers in question are more than 30 metres.

On their part, the two fire station officers told their senior officials that they had never inspected the site and were simply made to sign the joint report as directed by Satyavan as he was their superior officer, according to the probe report.

Ahuja said, in the report, that further investigation revealed that a few other multi-storied buildings wrongly interpreted the NBC 2005 to construct only one staircase in residential towers. While developers of the projects were issued notices to construct additional staircases within a timeframe, no such notice was issued in this case.

Despite repeated efforts, the developer of the Sector 85 project could not be could not be contacted.