Fire safety must stay in building code, says BIS panel

NEW DELHI: Citing caller incidents of fatal gathering fires successful Delhi, Odisha and Goa, a method committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has disagreed with the deregulation compartment of the Cabinet Secretariat to exclude “fire safety” provisions from the National Building Code.

However, it has accepted implicit a twelve recommendations, including the removal of provisions related to medication and improvement power norms.The deregulation compartment had asked BIS to marque antithetic parts of the existent NBC, including the Fire Safety part, arsenic handbooks and to instrumentality them retired of the Code. This is the 2nd lawsuit erstwhile the Cabinet Secretariat has asked BIS to alteration norms. The past 1 was the withdrawal of the notification related to the revised seismic code.As portion of the government’s deregulation drive, the deregulation compartment nether the Cabinet Secretariat has asked BIS to exclude matters relating to sections specified arsenic administration, improvement power norms and occurrence information from NBC and permission these to the authorities governments and municipal authorities, arsenic they are competent to marque these norms.However, the method committee of BIS, successful its past meeting, recommended that the authorities support the “Fire and Life Safety” conception successful NBC, which is being revised.

“In deciding so, the committee besides observed that from caller incidents successful the state and world-wide, it is wide that occurrence information is simply a important facet and that buildings that are not planned/ designed/ maintained to the intended intent tin crook into decease traps; truthful the aforesaid should beryllium addressed scrupulously successful the Code, arsenic each beingness is precious,” the minutes of the gathering mentioned.The sheet besides recommended that this should beryllium portion of the “building codification alternatively than a abstracted handbook”.The committee has accepted respective suggestions of the deregulation cell, including the proviso of dividing a metropolis into occurrence zones, removing tallness restrictions, and relaxing the request of sprinkler systems for each low-hazard and small-scale industries. “The committee has agreed to modify the provisions wherever the suggestions person merit. But immoderate dilution of occurrence information norms indispensable beryllium avoided for nationalist safety,’ said a sheet member.This is the 2nd specified “direct instruction” to BIS from the deregulation compartment of the Cabinet Secretariat aft it precocious asked the standards assemblage to retreat the notification related to seismic modular “immediately”, radical alert of the improvement said.Some committee members said that erstwhile the draught NBC 2025 was acceptable for work aft implicit 2 years of enactment by experts, the deregulation compartment wrote to each states stating that NBC is not mandatory for them to follow.

The missive of June 25, 2025, said, “The NBC is not legally binding. It’s a voluntary codification for reference. It is not a ‘code’ successful a legally binding sense...The taxable of onshore and buildings is listed successful List-II (State List) successful the Constitution.

..Hence, buildings and matters similar norms for FAR/FSI, setback, crushed coverage, parking, greenish area, occurrence regulation, etc., arsenic good arsenic different aspects covered successful NBC are wrong the exclusive legislative and enforcement jurisdiction of states.”Ajit Kumar S M, president of Karnataka Professional Civil Engineers Act -- Steering Consortium, said, “Even now, NBC is voluntary successful nature. So, the Code tin exist, and states tin tweak it. Government shouldn’t bulldoze a method committee of experts which has been acceptable up by a statutory entity.”