Overview
- The PMC fire brigade sealed 11 paying-guest hostels on Friday after teams found multi-storey buildings housing more than 100 students that lacked permanent or temporary fire-fighting systems.
- Inspectors issued seven-day notices to 36 establishments in Shivajinagar, Navi Peth and Lohegaon, directing owners to produce building permissions, fire NOCs, structural audits, water and drainage clearances, and property tax records or face sealing.
- Civic teams widened inspections over the weekend to include coaching centres, gyms, scrap shops and godowns and ordered 13 PGs and seven scrap units to shut for storing combustible material and lacking safety arrangements.
- Municipal Commissioner Naval Kishore Ram has asked the fire brigade for a consolidated report within 10 days and warned that owners of unauthorised or non-compliant premises and institutions that refer students to them could face FIRs or other legal action.
- Pune’s large student and coaching economy, fragmentary permissions records and unauthorised conversions are cited by officials as causes of systemic gaps that the sweep seeks to fix and that could prompt sustained field-based enforcement after the Ganesh festival.