The rampant violations have again raised questions about how such structures went undetected in a neighbourhood where multi-storey PG buildings have proliferated for years. The building that collapsed in south Delhi’s Satya Niketan on Sunday, killing several people, had no sanctioned building plan and unauthorised construction in its basement, according to a senior Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) official aware of the early assessment following the latest tragedy.
An MCD official said the area was among about 45 resettlement colonies developed in the 1970s, with freehold rights granted in 2011. In 2023, Mukherjee Nagar saw a major crackdown on PGs and coaching centres after a June 15 coaching-centre fire injured 61 students. MCD had said buildings above 9 metres housing more than 20 students could not operate without a fire NOC under the Master Plan and Unified Building Byelaws.
But much of the construction that transformed the low-rise settlement into a dense student hub happened outside the rules, with senior MCD officials saying no sanctioned building plan exists for the collapsed structure and that construction in its basement was unauthorised. Its proximity to South Campus , however, transformed it into a major rental and student accommodation hub, with property owners increasingly adding rooms and floors to existing structures. “I lived here a year back. “I had given similar feedback to four-five of my friends who came to live here to move out. Satya Niketan is not an isolated case. Fire and building safety failures in student-heavy neighbourhoods have repeatedly triggered enforcement drives, only for concerns to resurface later.
Accommodations in older buildings have slightly less rent, so that’s why students prefer them, at least in the first and second year.
Divy Upadhyay, a third-year student at Motilal Nehru College who lived in the collapsed building until a year ago, said the building’s condition had concerned him even then. Later, in the third year, I moved into a flat with friends,” he said.
The collapse has raised pointed questions about the civic body’s failure to control illegal construction in Satya Niketan — a densely packed neighbourhood next to Delhi University ’s South Campus that came up in the early 1970s (one of Delhi’s first resettlement colonies) in an area originally developed as a resettlement colony, but now houses hundreds of five- and six-storey buildings, PGs, messes and eateries catering to a large student population.
