Illegal construction and rampant fire-safety violations have long proved a recipe for disaster in Calcutta, from Burrabazar to Garden Reach and Anandapur.
Tuesday’s fire in an illegal Tiljala building, which killed two people, showed once again how little has changed despite repeated fatal blazes across the city.
Commercial establishments continue to violate fire-safety norms, civic officials said, while people still live in buildings declared dangerous by the civic body. Eviction drives are often stalled by local resistance.
“Illegal construction has thrived for decades because of a nexus involving politicians, councillors, police and some civic engineers,” a Kolkata Municipal Corporation official said.
The civic body has prepared a list of illegal buildings, which sources said would now be updated and reviewed more rigorously.
On January 26, a fire at two warehouses near Anandapur killed at least 27 employees trapped inside buildings that allegedly lacked fire-safety clearance. Eighteen victims were identified through DNA profiling, and several arrests followed.
In April last year, a fire at the Rituraj Hotel in Burrabazar killed 14 people, including two children. Investigators alleged the hotel lacked basic fire-safety systems.
A five-storey under-construction building in a congested bylane in Garden Reach’s Azhar Molla Bagan collapsed on March 18 2024, killing 13 people under its weight.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation said the building, in the Calcutta mayor’s own Assembly area, was illegal. Civic engineers said they suspected substandard materials were being used.
Some people in the locality said the building came up on what used to be a water body. Calcutta Municipal Corporation officials said they had no record of a water body there.
The pillars of a four-storey building in Tollygunge crumbled, tilting the structure dangerously above neighbouring premises in January 2025. The construction of the building in Naktala had started in 2009-10 on what was a water body.
In February this year, Mayor Firhad Hakim said more than 700 buildings with deviations of up to 1,000sq ft from their sanctioned plans had been regularised over the past few years, amid allegations of rampant unauthorised construction across the city.
He had also said portions of 850 illegal buildings had been demolished. The deaths in Tiljala showed that the steps were inadequate.