Fire safety must stay in building code, says BIS panel

NEW DELHI: Citing recent incidents of fatal building fires in Delhi, Odisha and Goa, a technical committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has disagreed with the deregulation cell of the Cabinet Secretariat to exclude “fire safety” provisions from the National Building Code. However, it has accepted over a dozen recommendations, including the removal of provisions related to administration and development control norms.

The deregulation cell had asked BIS to make different parts of the current NBC, including the Fire Safety part, as handbooks and to take them out of the Code. This is the second instance when the Cabinet Secretariat has asked BIS to change norms. The last one was the withdrawal of the notification related to the revised seismic code.

As part of the government’s deregulation drive, the deregulation cell under the Cabinet Secretariat has asked BIS to exclude matters relating to sections such as administration, development control norms and fire safety from NBC and leave these to the state governments and municipal authorities, as they are competent to make these norms.

However, the technical committee of BIS, in its last meeting, recommended that the government keep the “Fire and Life Safety” section in NBC, which is being revised. “In deciding so, the committee also observed that from recent incidents in the country and world-wide, it is clear that fire safety is a crucial aspect and that buildings that are not planned/ designed/ maintained to the intended purpose can turn into death traps; so the same should be addressed scrupulously in the Code, as every life is precious,” the minutes of the meeting mentioned.

The panel also recommended that this should be part of the “building code rather than a separate handbook”.

The committee has accepted several suggestions of the deregulation cell, including the provision of dividing a city into fire zones, removing height restrictions, and relaxing the requirement of sprinkler systems for all low-hazard and small-scale industries. “The committee has agreed to modify the provisions where the suggestions have merit. But any dilution of fire safety norms must be avoided for public safety,’ said a panel member.

This is the second such “direct instruction” to BIS from the deregulation cell of the Cabinet Secretariat after it recently asked the standards body to withdraw the notification related to seismic standard “immediately”, people aware of the development said.

Some committee members said that when the draft NBC 2025 was ready for publication after over two years of work by experts, the deregulation cell wrote to all states stating that NBC is not mandatory for them to follow. The letter of June 25, 2025, said, “The NBC is not legally binding. It’s a voluntary code for reference. It is not a ‘code’ in a legally binding sense...The subject of land and buildings is listed in List-II (State List) in the Constitution...Hence, buildings and matters like norms for FAR/FSI, setback, ground coverage, parking, green area, fire regulation, etc., as well as other aspects covered in NBC are within the exclusive legislative and executive jurisdiction of states.”

Ajit Kumar S M, president of Karnataka Professional Civil Engineers Act -- Steering Consortium, said, “Even now, NBC is voluntary in nature. So, the Code can exist, and states can tweak it. Government shouldn’t bulldoze a technical committee of experts which has been set up by a statutory entity.”