Electricity had still not been restored to a section of Queens Mansion on Saturday evening, forcing some shops to close early.

A fire broke out at a sweet shop at Queens Mansion on Friday afternoon. The Gupta Brothers and Giggles stores were gutted. The fire was an eye-opener for residents and shop owners who realised the building requires a proper fire safety mechanism.

They have decided to write to the LIC, which owns the building.

“Electricity has not been restored to one section of the building, adjacent to where the fire broke out. We kept our store open till afternoon because we had some deliveries scheduled,” said Nadeem Ali Akhtar, the proprietor of suit-makers Barkat Ali and Bros, next to Gupta Brothers.

“We were told power will be restored by Monday. Some wires got burnt... Some repairs will be needed before the electricity can be restored.”

A senior CESC official said the electric wires in a part of the building had been damaged.

“Electricity was restored to 85 per cent of the building on Saturday. In the rest, the electric wires have been damaged. Electricity has not been restored here for safety reasons. We have shown the damage to the building owners. They will do the repairs and inform us, after which we will conduct an inspection,” the official said.

Some residents and shop owners told The Telegraph they would write to the LIC to install a firefighting mechanism. “We will write to the LIC,” said one of them.

Residents told The Telegraph that the six-storey building did not have water sprinklers, smoke alarms or water pipelines to fight a fire. Some extinguishers were installed a few years ago but they have disappeared.

The fire tenders had to be replenished from two neighbouring buildings on Friday as the fire brigade personnel could not locate a source of water in Queens Mansion.

An LIC official said most tenants paid a meagre rent and were unwilling to draw up a contract with the LIC. “They have been here for decades and have not signed any agreement with the LIC.”

Axis Bank’s Park Street branch, on one side of the gutted stores, managed to function normally on Saturday. “We had brought in generators. The ATM functioned normally; we were able to serve all our customers,” said a spokesperson for the bank.

A cop said no complaint had been lodged till late on Saturday.

An officer of the fire services directorate said their preliminary probe suggested the blaze started from an air-conditioner and spread. “The fire reached the mezzanine level quickly and gutted the ground floor and mezzanine,” said the officer. “The exact cause can be determined after a forensic examination.”

The mezzanine and the ground floor are about 750sq ft, an officer said.

The iconic address, opposite The Park Hotel, was built in the 1920s. It is listed as a grade-I structure in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s Graded List of Heritage Buildings.