A Tinder Box Ready to Light: The Dangers of Old Delhi

The Delhi HC says the mess of electric wires in Chandni Chowk makes it a time bomb. Here’s proof.

Fire-fighters under a smoking building in Chawri Bazar.

(Photo: Shorbori Purkayastha/The Quint)

(The Delhi High Court, on 27 October, observed that the web of electric wires in Chandni Chowk makes it a ticking “time bomb”. The bench directed the Delhi Police and the Municipal Corporation to prevent encroachments in the area, and instructed shopkeepers and hawkers to adopt alternate methods. The following article was first published on 23 June 2016 and is being reposted from The Quint’s archives in light of the judgement.)

At 4 pm in the middle of a power outage, a fire breaks out in the middle of the Delhi’s Walled City. What should ideally take only ten minutes, takes the fire trucks one hour to wind their way through the gridlocked streets, tightly packed with pedestrians and vehicles alike, before they can douse the flames.

A frantic resident complains, “I called the Fire Station over an hour back... it is a matter of people’s safety. The fire spread to the next building too!”

Onlookers gaze at smoke rising from a neighbouring building.

Fires like these are a regular occurrence in the heart of the city. The fire station by Jama Masjid says it gets 15 to 20 fire calls a month, often the result of poorly rigged electrical wires bursting into flames.

Though the firemen are usually able to keep the blaze under control, residents of Old Delhi aren’t always so lucky.

In 1999, a fire in Tilak Bazar – the chemical market – claimed 59 lives. A nearby paper market at Parade Ground is also a risk.

Bad electric wiring is often behind Old Delhi’s fires. 

“[The vendors] store a lot of stock here, which is very dangerous. Throughout the day they’re just loading and unloading stock, blocking the roads,” said Vijay Singh, advisor of a heritage charitable society and former deputy commissioner (City Zone).

When the fires spin out of control, the consequences are devastating. Old Delhi is densely populated and the ageing buildings aren’t structurally sound to be converted into warehouses to contain inflammable substances such a chemical and paper, says Singh.

Fire fighters come out of a building after dousing a fire.

The paper and chemical markets are no longer supposed to be in the Walled City. More than 10 years ago, the government passed a decision to shift merchants in Tilak Bazar, Lal Kuan, Chawri Bazar and Sadar Bazar by December 2005.

Plots of land were allotted for these paper and chemical merchants in Holambi Kalan and Ghazipur.

The blackened remains of an Old Delhi building.

But the markets remain. Without assurances that their businesses won’t suffer, many merchants aren’t willing to cross over to new locations – even though storing acids, chemicals in their liquid form and solvents can be particularly unsafe in case of even a minor fire.

Instead, the Chemical Merchants Association says merchants no longer store flammable materials in their shops and the Paper Merchants Association says they’ve shifted some of their storage to miscellaneous locations outside Old Delhi.

Chemical being transferred from one vessel into the other in Tilak Bazar’s Chemical Market.

“It’s a very old and historic market,” said Sandeep Gupta, Treasurer of the Paper Merchant Association. “If the whole market shifts there would be no economic consequences.”

A sign informs customers that hazardous chemicals are stored in the shop. 

Posters with names of chemicals that are sold in a shop in Tilak Bazar’s Chemical Market.

The Delhi Development Authority hasn’t allotted enough land, Gupta added. Out of the 1,500-plus paper merchants in the city, only 621 plots were given.

The Quint made repeated attempts to verify this information with the DDA, but the authorities did not respond.

The entrance to the chemical market in Old Delhi. 

Both paper and chemical merchants maintain that the government hasn’t given them the facilities they need to shift their businesses.

“The area is not developed,” insists Rajesh Bansal, son of the head of the Chemical Traders Association.

There are no roads or street lights, and the allotted areas lack the security they need for their goods, he added.

Paper vendors in Chawri Bazar.

But between the merchants and the government authorities, the blame game continues in an endless loop.

“Lack of infrastructure is only an excuse to avoid tax revisions,” says Singh of the Heritage Trust. “In an organised market you can keep a record of what is coming and what is going. The traders want to avoid that.”