Kolkata, Aug 19 (IANS) After the fire incident at a hotel on Mirza Ghalib Street in central Kolkata, which claimed nine lives, the government has decided to conduct an audit of all the hotels and lodges in the same locality, the West Bengal Minister of State for Fire Services, Koushik Chowdhury, said on Wednesday.
“I wonder how the hotels were allotted trade licenses in the first place during the previous regimes? The state fire services department has a major station at Mirza Ghalib Street. The hotel building where the fire broke out this morning was very near to that fire service station. Each floor of that building has a separate hotel or guest house. The passageways there are so narrow that even two persons cannot walk or stand side by side. There is no external staircase for emergency exit,” Chowdhury told media persons.
Thereafter, he said he had a detailed discussion with Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on the matter, and it was decided that a thorough audit of all hotels, lodges and guesthouses would be conducted. “We are adopting a zero tolerance approach in the matter. Not a single erring entity will be spared,” Chowdhury added.
In April 2025, a devastating fire broke out at Hotel Rituraj in Jorasanko’s Mechua area in central Kolkata, taking a toll of 14 lives. Thereafter, the previous Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress formed a special audit committee to review safety norms in all hotels, big or small, within the area of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC).
Since the state fire services department did not have adequate manpower to conduct that special audit, it had to depend on a third party to do the same. However, everything stopped after four consecutive meetings of the said committee and the report was not submitted to the KMC or to the state fire services department.
“For some unknown reason, the progress in the audit work stopped midway, and the tragedy of the Jorasanko fire slowly faded out of public memory. Had the audit process been completed then, probably the loss of nine lives today in the Mirza Ghalib Street fire could have been avoided,” said a state fire services department official.
He also said that during the previous regime, several requests were sent to the state finance department for additional fund allocation for fresh recruitments to solve the problem of inadequate manpower. “But the sanctions were never made,” the state fire services department official said.
Initial findings by the police and the West Bengal Fire Services Department have revealed that the nine people, including two women and a child, killed in the fire incident at the hotel this morning died of suffocation rather than burn injuries
–IANS
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