The Bombay high court recently refused to grant any interim relief to the Association of Fire Protection, a body of contractors dealing with maintenance of fire safety equipment in buildings. The body had challenged the government rules laying down criteria for grant of licence to contractors.
A division bench of justices Abhay Oka and Amjad Sayyed accepted the state government affidavit opposing the petition. The affidavit said these rules are framed under the Maharashtra Fire Prevention and Life Safety Measures Act, 2006, and Rules of 2009. The objective of these rules is to regulate fire safety equipment, and contractors/agencies play an important role in avoiding any untoward incident.
The court has admitted the petition but refused to grant any interim relief. Accordingly, the petition will now come up for hearing in due course of time.
As per rules, it is mandatory for all new buildings to install fire safety equipment. The contractors have to maintain the equipment and the government regulates them by granting licences.
For obtaining a licence, the agencies have to meet certain criteria, which include having a minimum turnover of Rs1 crore. This, the association said, was arbitrary and unreasonable. The petition said the overall turnover of such contractors is very less as the cost of equipment is low. A water hydrant is the only equipment that costs Rs3.5 lakh and, thus, meeting the turnover criterion would be difficult. The association also said the rules were favouring the big contractors and would render the small ones out of business.
However, advocate Molina Thakur, appearing for the state, filed an affidavit saying that in Maharashtra 339 licences have been issued to 197 contractors till now and, hence, it's not correct (to say) that there will be no agencies coming forward to get licence.
"The conditions are imposed so that sufficient manpower and quality of the contractors is maintained to ensure there's no untoward incident as seen in the recent past," she said.
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