The Supreme Court on Tuesday indicated it may expand its court-monitored exercise against illegal constructions and unauthorised change of land use in Delhi to cover the safety of student accommodation, following the death of seven people in the collapse of an illegally constructed building being used as a paying guest facility in Satya Niketan .
The court turned down an oral request from Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, MCD and Delhi Police, to allow the Delhi High Court to continue dealing with the Satya Niketan collapse separately. The amicus has proposed a time-bound inspection and safety audit of PGs, private hostels and similar student accommodation facilities across Delhi. The audit would examine sanctioned building plans against actual construction, the number of floors, basement construction and alterations, permissible land use, structural safety and fire-safety compliance, means of ingress and egress and whether the premises are in a dangerous or ruinous condition. It has questioned whether the existing system for inspecting buildings, identifying dangerous structures and enforcing building regulations is adequate to prevent such tragedies. A bench of chief justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia also ordered an inquiry at the highest executive level into the Satya Niketan collapse and directed the MCD to identify officials responsible for any regulatory lapses. The high court had observed that responsibility for such mishaps did not prima facie lie only with the owner of the PG but also extended to university authorities and the MCD, which is responsible for ensuring that construction and development in Delhi complies with applicable building regulations.
The report has also pointed to the recurrence of building collapses in Satya Niketan, noting that another building collapse in the locality in April 2022 had killed two people and injured four.
When Mehta urged that the tragic incident not be mixed with the larger issue already pending before the Supreme Court, the bench disagreed. The precise cause of the collapse is still under investigation, though preliminary material has indicated construction-related work in or around the basement and waterlogging immediately before the incident.
