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Juhu hospital cocks a snook at FSI compliance

There is a disaster waiting to happen in the basement of the 100-bed CritiCare Hospital in Juhu.

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There is a disaster waiting to happen in the basement of the 100-bed CritiCare Hospital in Juhu. There are consulting rooms, a waiting lounge, an X-ray chamber and a blood bank there. Not only does this fly in the face of the floor space index (FSI) granted to it by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), it also poses a fire hazard.

According to the floor plan of the building and the occupation certificate issued by the BMC on March 10, 2008, both of which are in possession of DNA, the basement is only meant for storage purposes. Even the fire department issued a no-objection certificate to the hospital based on this floor plan, which had made it clear that the use of the basement would be exclusively for storage. Going by the floor plan, the hospital did not have to pay the BMC a premium on extra floor space index (FSI) for the basement.

That the hospital has thrown fire safety rules to the wind was clear when Suhas Joshi, fire chief of Mumbai, cleared the air on whether basements of hospitals can be used for commercial purposes. “We only allow basements to be used for storage and utility purposes because basements have no ventilation and having people there in case of a fire can lead to serious problems,” he said.

Such blatant violations of rules by the hospital were brought to the notice of the BMC by RTI activists Suleiman Bhimani and Abid Shah on March 20. After the hospital received a notice from the civic body, it approached the BMC court in Goregaon and got a stay order.

Dr Deepak Namjoshi, director, CritiCare Hospital, said, “When the building was being designed, the architect assured us that we could use the basement for activities that were concurrent to what would go on in the rest of the hospital. We didn’t know that using it for commercial purposes was illegal.”

He, however, took umbrage at the issue of fire safety. “Our fire safety laws are archaic. All over the world, people use the basement for all sorts of activities. Only over here do we stop people from using basements [for commercial purposes].”

When DNA visited the hospital, it found that the basement had a smoke alarm, a fire extinguisher and a single staircase as an exit point.

Bhimani said despite the stay order, he will present the case again to the BMC court as an intervening party.

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