Madras HC orders school safety panel in all districts

Nearly 14 years after the Kumbakonam fire tragedy, where 94 school children were charred to death, and a Supreme Court ruling in 2009 directing every school to adhere to the National Building Code of India-2005, the Madras High Court on Monday asked the Director of School Education to set up a committee in every district headed by the Chief Educational Officer and comprising experts to inspect all schools. 

Seeking to ensure that the schools confirm to the requisite building regulation and safety norms as per the provisions of the National Building Code, the first bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Abdul Quddhose passed interim orders on a PIL filed by Change India represented by its director A Narayanan. The bench, on posting the case for further hearing to April, also directed the state, School Education department, CBSE, CMDA and Directorate of Town and Country Planning to file their counter affidavits within a week.

The PIL on citing the Kumbakonam fire tragedy sought for a direction to the authorities to ensure that every school in the state, be it government or aided, imparting Samacheer, CBSE, ICSE education etc shall strictly comply with Part-IV-Fire and Life Safety and the Code of Practice of Fire Safety in Educational Institutions of the Bureau of Indian Standards enumerated in the National Building Code 2005 as directed by the Supreme Court. 

Narayanan had submitted that there appeared to be no sincere effort at yearly inspection of the infrastructure and safety of schools and maintenance of standards and norms by constituting district-level inspection teams. The inspections were restricted only to school buses and not the premises. Hence, year after year several incidents have been reported in various schools in which children lose their lives or get badly injured. 

It was the responsibility of the authorities to constitute a team consisting of experts to hold an inspection and assess infrastructural facilities before the commencement of every academic year, as extracted from the National Public Building Code of India 2005 dated April 13, 2009. If some schools do not comply with the provisions of the National Building Code, the authorities shall take firm action to de-recognise such schools and close them forthwith, he added.