Lucknow hotel to be demolished after fire incident

Lucknow: Hotel Levana Suites in Lucknow, where a fire had broken out on September 5 claiming four lives, will be demolished next month.

The Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) court (non-judicial) has issued a notice to the owners of the hotel on charges of illegal construction, asking them to raze the building located on Madan Mohan Malviya Marg themselves by December 9, failing which the Authority would do the needful and realise the cost from the owners.

On September 9, the high court had taken suo motu cognizance of the September 5 fire incident at the hotel that claimed four lives.

As many as 19 people were also injured after a massive blaze on the third floor of the hotel, where nearly 30 people were present at the time of the accident.

A division bench of Justices Devendra Kumar Upadhyay and Saurabh Srivastava directed the LDA, the fire department and the state government to file proper replies about the steps taken to prevent fire incidents in commercial establishments.

The team probing the incident found that the map of the hotel was not passed and it was operating illegally without converting the land use to commercial use.

Family members of the four deceased -- Gurnoor Anand, Sahiba Kaur, Bobby Aman Ghazi and Sarvika Singh -- had demanded action against the hotel owner.

LDA vice-chairman Indramani Tripathi said: "If a building is constructed without the map, the Development Authority has the right to send a demolition notice to the building owner. If there is no response to the notice, the Authority can demolish the property."

However, Sumer Agarwal, one of the owners of Levana Suites, contradicted claims of the Authority, saying" "We have submitted all papers related to the hotel to the LDA court. The map is approved with an LDA stamp on it."