Calcutta’s rooftop cafés, lounges, bars and restaurants will be shut down, mayor Firhad Hakim said on Friday, confounding a segment that has been booming since the pandemic and boasts of some of the city’s most popular hangouts.

A building’s terrace will be considered a common area and no encroachment will be allowed, the mayor said, making it clear the decision was linked to the fire safety drive implemented following a devastating hotel blaze this week.

“Rooftop restaurants will be shut and the structures will have to be removed. If there’s a fire in a building’s lower part, everyone would have access to the terrace,” Hakim said.

“Similarly, if there’s a fire at the building’s top, residents can come down and converge in the common area on the ground.”

Calcutta has over 1,000 such rooftop establishments. The owners of some of them were unwilling to comment on Friday in the absence of a formal closure notice.

Privately, they expressed dismay, saying the sweeping crackdown was unfair and would take away jobs and livelihoods, affecting tens of thousands of families.

“A terrace means a common area. No one can sell it,” Hakim said.

“Just like one can’t sell stairs or the common space in a building, a terrace can’t be sold. It will be considered a common area in the building plan, and no encroachments will be allowed.”

The announcement came a day after chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited the fire-ravaged Rituraj Hotel in Mechua, where 14 people died on Tuesday, and asked the business community to follow fire safety norms or face government action.

“I have asked the (Calcutta) police commissioner to instruct the officers in charge of police stations to draw a list of rooftop restaurants. We will send the notices accordingly,” Hakim said.

“Our officers will visit and ask the owners to dismantle the structures on the terraces…. After a while, we will have to apply force. But not initially. If anyone refuses to abide by it, legal steps will be initiated.”

On Friday evening, civic authorities bagan demolishing a portion of LMNOQ at Celica Park.

Many of the rooftop lounges, bars and cafés had come up amid the Covid pandemic, when people were afraid to visit confined places.

During Tuesday night’s fire at the central Calcutta hotel, some of those inside had scampered to the terrace and flashed their mobile torches to draw the attention of the firefighters.

They were shifted to the rooftop of an adjoining building using a hydraulic ladder and rescued.

“Fifteen people who were at the hotel would have died had they not reached the terrace. A staircase at the building’s rear had been converted into a godown, and people couldn’t access it,” Hakim said.

On her way back from the site of fire on Thursday, Mamata had stopped by at Celica Park on Park Street and flagged her concerns about fire safety, pointing to the LPG cylinders arrayed on shelves in multiple tiers near the building’s entrance.

She had instructed Hakim, fire and emergency services minister Sujit Basu and city police chief Manoj Verma to meet the building’s representatives.

Six restaurants, located in various buildings on the Celica Park compound, were shut within an hour of the chief minister leaving the place, a stone’s throw from Stephen Court where a 2010 inferno killed over 40 people.

“At Stephen Court, the door leading to the terrace was shut. I had gone as an MLA in the Opposition. People tried to reach the terrace and died near the collapsible gate opening into the terrace,” Hakim said.

At Celica House, the demolition of LMNOQ – the lone rooftop restaurant among the six closed on Thursday -- began on Friday evening. Earlier in the day, a notice had been served on the popular party spot asking that the structure be pulled down.

Hakim said: “I don’t have a count of such restaurants readily at hand. But if we get to know there is one at a particular place, we will (do) the same (close it down).”

Most of the other five Celica Park restaurants shut a day ago reopened on Friday but with a curtailed menu. Induction cookers were used instead of LPG cylinders. The authorities had seized the offending LPG cylinders on Thursday.

After the hotel tragedy, Mamata had said a committee would look into the fire preparedness of buildings and commercial complexes and submit a report within a fortnight.

Hakim said that once the government issued a notification about the committee’s composition, the members would meet, either on Monday or Tuesday. “The departments will submit suggestions and recommendations, including the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, fire services and police, on issues that are under their respective jurisdictions,” Hakim said.

“Since rooftop restaurants are under the KMC’s jurisdiction, we have decided they will be shut.”

Hakim said the notices to the rooftop restaurants would be sent under Rule 117(4) of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Building Rules, 2009.

Senior officials said Rule 117 deals with a building’s roof. Chapter 4 of the Rule states: “Every terrace on the topmost storey of any building shall have a common access and shall not be subdivided.”

A senior civic official said: “We will be sending out notices to the restaurant owners citing Chapter 4 of Rule 117 and asking them to clarify if they have abided by them and, if not, what the deviations are.”