A day after a portion of a British-era Connaught Place building collapsed, the blame game continued on Friday between NDMC -- under whose jurisdiction the central Delhi area comes -- and area traders.
"The NDMC (New Delhi Municipal Corporation) tinkered with its structure during its 2010 refurbishing project. They must have ended up weakening the building in Block C. One can only speculate though," an owner of a famous photography shop in the area told IANS.
"It took exactly 12 days to repair the pillar outside my shop, since the structure was built with solid concrete. Even the drilling machine gave in at one point... I believe they did not maintain the same quality, material-wise, as the British had," he said.
The colonnade, bathed in white, was built in 1933 by the British and named after the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn.
The question of sanctity of the 'basic structure' of the heritage market is not lost on the NDMC too, which has prescribed guidelines on the extent of changes an owner/tenant can make.
"We do not allow anyone to tinker with the basic structure of the buildings, though we do authorise shopkeepers to carry out small repairs. However, there are many shopkeepers and owners who try to make changes every two-three years. At times they undertake these works under wraps... we serve them notices whenever we find a violation," an NDMC official not wishing to be named told IANS.
Although the exact cause of Thursday's roof collapse hasn't been explained as yet, the official listed a number of reasons for the mishap.
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"The entire structure is about 100 years old and even though we carry out repairs from time to time, it is crumbling from inside. Moreover, there are establishments which use rooftops as dumpyard for heavy objects... this must have contributed to weakening of the roof," the NDMC official said.
He maintained that the municipal body had only worked on the facade, window frames and pillar cracks during its refurbishing project.
"The exercise actually ended up strengthening the structure, since there's a sea of difference between cement quality then and now. The cement we used is far superior," he claimed.
--IANS
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