The Bombay High Court on Wednesday came down heavily on the Maharashtra government over not notifying fire safety regulations. The court pulled up the Urban Development Department of the Maharashtra Government for not showing any urgency in issuing notifications for fire safety regulations.

The bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar said that if the necessary steps were not taken within the stipulated time, the court may consider passing orders stopping all building plan approvals in the city.

The bench said that had the court not been passing orders regularly on fire safety concerns, the state would have done little on the issue. “We are not asking you to give fire extinguishers. It is a simple thing. Notification. But you have not been able to do that”, said the bench.

The development came days after seven people of a family were killed after a fire broke out in a double-storey shop-cum-residential structure in Mumbai’s Chembur.

The bench also warned that it would personally summon the Principal Secretary of the department after Advocate Aditya Pratap, representing petitioner Abha Singh, drew the court’s attention towards the Chembur incident.

The Urban Development Department was earlier given two months’ time to call for objections and suggestions from the public and thereafter issue notifications with “a sense of extreme urgency and expeditiously” deal with it.

Abha Singh has filed a petition by which she is seeking enforcement of the 2009 draft special rules and regulations for fire safety in buildings vulnerable to man-made disasters. The regulations were issued in 2009 in the aftermath of 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai.

During the hearing on Wednesday, Advocate Pratap argued that the latest draft prepared by the state was much watered down compared to the one prepared in 2009.

He also pointed out that the state had still not issued the notification in spite of collecting all objections and suggestions, adding that multistorey residential buildings with hardly any space for a fire tender to move around them are being given No Objection Certificates (NCOs) by the fire department, which was extremely risky.

Assistant Government Pleader Jyoti Chavan, representing the state, submitted that the department has compiled the file which has to be put up before the Maharashtra Cabinet but the Code of Conduct, in the wake of the upcoming state Assembly elections, may come into effect anytime now.

“Election is more important that the lives of people”, Singh’s lawyer, Advocate Pratap, said in a sarcastic manner.

The court, too, noted that in July this year, it had expressed its expectation and hope that the final notification would be issued by October 9. The bench said that considering the urgency, two months’ time was given, but the final notification was not yet out.

The High Court also observed that while the state was acting slow, accidents causing fire have not abated in residential, commercial and industrial buildings. The court noted that the Chembur incident was not the only incident reported lately.

The court has given two days’ time to the authorities to state as to what minimum period they would take to finalise the notification on fire safety regulations, and has scheduled next hearing in the matter on October 11.