Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya has turned down the request of the owners of ceremony houses to relax licence renewal rules.

“The old ceremony houses cannot meet certain requirements,” said a representative of the house-owners, who met the mayor on Tuesday. “How can we strengthen the foundation of a 40-year-old building?”

The mayor, however, asserted that the ceremony houses would have to obtain licences by meeting the recently introduced criteria.

“One’s business cannot be a nightmare for the neighbours,” said municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay.

Only 370 of the over 2,000 ceremony houses in the city had licences till December. Only five ceremony houses have been able to renew their licences.

The civic authorities have decided to issue a public notice asking citizens not to book ceremony houses that do not have licences.