The building collapse in Delhi’s Seemapuri, which killed at least five people, has once again exposed the gap between rules and their enforcement. The collapse has striking similarities with a string of building fires and collapses in the Capital this year. Magisterial inquiries repeatedly found illegal construction, regulatory failures, ignored warnings and weak emergency preparedness in these cases.
After the Hauz Rani fire, the government launched a citywide exercise involving district administrations, police, the MCD and the fire service to identify illegal and unsafe buildings. But HT subsequently reported that the inspection drive gradually lost steam after about a month. HT accessed the magisterial inquiry reports into the Saidulajab building collapse and the fires in Hauz Rani, Palam and Vivek Vihar. All four reports highlighted how multiple agencies had overlooked glaring red flags. What makes the Seemapuri tragedy particularly troubling is that the warning signs were identified in previous disasters. Police also alerted the civic body in March to verify whether construction, including a fifth floor, was in accordance with the sanctioned plan. The magisterial inquiry found that the establishment continued operating despite repeated warnings and serious discrepancies in its licensing and inspection records. At least four agencies, the MCD, Delhi Police, the tourism department, and BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd, were found to have contributed to the regulatory failure. The tragedy exposed another familiar weakness: inspections without sustained follow-up. A Delhi Fire Services aerial platform was hampered by illegal overhead cables. There was no effective backup plan when the equipment failed. The inquiry found that personnel operating sophisticated equipment lacked formal training and highlighted manpower shortages within the fire service.
The Seemapuri building, according to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), was 20-25 years old and stood on a roughly 25-square-yard plot in a jhuggi-jhopri cluster under the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board. Saidulajab building collapse In Saidulajab, where six people were killed in the collapse of an unauthorised building on May 30, a magisterial inquiry concluded that the disaster was preventable. Four days after Saidulajab, 23 people were killed in the Hauz Rani fire at an illegally expanded bed-and-breakfast. The March 18 Palam fire, which killed nine people, exposed shortcomings not just in the building but in the emergency response system.
The building was been “booked” by the MCD for violations, yet meaningful enforcement action had not followed. Officials said district-level teams identified violations but lacked the powers to seal properties themselves, leaving effective enforcement dependent on other agencies.
