Most Old City firecracker shops illegal

AHMEDABAD: This year when you head to the walled city to buy firecrackers at discounted rates, you might be venturing towards a ticking bomb. Except for two shops in the walled city, no others have been authorized to sell fire crackers as they are deemed dangerous to life and unsafe.
Often, at these shops live electric wires traversing over cracker displays can be noticed, the absence of fire extinguishing equipments is only too evident and most of these shops are located in densely populated residential and market areas.But despite five major accidents in the walled city in the last four years, these fire cracker markets pop up again before Diwali.
Most of these shops in the walled city are located in, Raipur Darwaza, Kubernagar, Bapunagar, Saraspur, Dilli Darwaza main road and Manekchowk and have not been granted No Objection Certificates (NOCs) by the Fire department — a pre-requisite for obtaining temporary explosive licence from the Police department. But despite this law a few fire cracker shops in these areas display a temporary licence for explosives from the Police department, but they are deemed unsafe by the fire department of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
This year, the state disaster management authority has made it mandatory for fire cracker shops to first obtain an NOC from the three AMC departments — fire department, estate department and health department, and only then is the police required to issue a temporary licence to firecracker vendors.
Areas like Raipur Darwaza, Kubernagar, Dilli Darwaza, Manek Chowk have firecracker establishments that have temporary explosive storage licences from the police that have exaggerated storage permission. Citing an example of a shop in Raipur Darwaza, a Fire department official reveals as to how the shop was given permission to store just 100 kgs of explosive material by AMC but the Police department issued a license for storage capacity of 1,000 Kg to the same shop!
"If anybody gets injured in a fire at this shop the law can hold officers of the fire and police responsible as both departments had issued licences for different storage capacity to the same vendor," says a senior fire officer.
"The police has no professional expertise in dealing with flammable and explosive substances, but the irony is that not only are they involved in the licensing process, but also have the final authority for issuing explosive storage licenses" adds the fire department official.
When asked if the fire department takes any action against illegal encroachments, chief fire officer, M F Dastur said, "When the Fire department has not given an NOC, it is clear that the establishment is unfit for business. We don’t have the authority to close down any shops, the police department has."