Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: A technical committee of Bureau of Indian Standards has recommended the cabinet secretariat’s deregulation cell to reconsider its “suggestion” to drop fire and life safety from the main National Building Code and move it to a “handbook”, arguing fire safety is a critical issue and buildings that are not planned or maintained well can turn into death traps.The deregulation cell, which is looking to ease life for individuals and businesses, has proposed a revamp of the National Building Code (NBC), with sections dealing with prerequisites for applying provisions of the code, administration and development control and promotion norms along with general building requirements be deleted. The cell’s suggestions were based on inputs from stakeholders.The cell had also proposed that fire and life safety, construction management, landscape development, approach to sustainability asset and facility management be part of separate “handbooks”, which work as references for best practices. The idea is to leave it to state govts and municipal authorities to decide norms.This is the second instance of the cell suggesting BIS change the norms. Last one was the withdrawal of notification related to revised seismic code.The BIS committee has accepted several suggestions of the deregulation cell, including the provision of dividing a city into fire zones, removing height restriction and relaxing the requirement of sprinkler system for all low-hazard and small-scale industries. “The committee has agreed to modify provisions where suggestions have merit. But any dilution of fire safety norms must be avoided for public safety,” said a panel member.Some committee members said that when draft NBC-2025 was ready for publication after over two years of work by experts, the cell in a letter to states said NBC is not mandatory for them to follow. The June 25 last year letter stated, “NBC is not legally binding. It’s a voluntary code for reference. It is not a ‘code’ in a legally binding sense…The subject of land and buildings is listed in List-II (State List) in the Constitution.” “Hence buildings and matters like norms for FAR/FSI, set back, ground coverage, parking, green area, fire regulation, etc as well as other aspects covered in NBC are within the exclusive legislative and executive jurisdiction of states,” it said.
