NDMC notice to 220 Khan Market units

After Connaught Place (CP), expensive retail location Khan Market has now come on the authorities' radar, with the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) on Tuesday serving notices to all of its 220 occupants, asking them to submit structural stability certificates. Last week, the civic body had issued these notices to over 900 units in CP.

The occupants include owners of shops, restaurants, pubs, and residential units. Over the years, just like CP, Khan Market, too, has turned into a food and nightlife hub. NDMC officials said the notices were issued under Section 258 (1) of the NDMC Act-1994, "declaring buildings dangerous for public safety". All the occupants have been asked to provide the certificates by March 6. They include popular restaurants and cafes, such as The Big Chill, Town Hall, Cafe Turtle, Urban Cafe, Route04, and Amici, among others.

Irked by the move, the Khan Market Traders Association has claimed that those on the first and the second floors were flouting the norms, as these were supposed to be residential units. Only ground floor units were supposed to house shops, the traders' body members said.

"Why should the ground floor shop owners be forced into this tedious exercise of getting the certificate when they are not violating the norms? This will affect our business. It is an unnecessary exercise for those on the ground floor," Sanjeev Mehra, President of the association said.

He added that the NDMC approves construction and renovation, and it should have procured these certificates prior to issuing licenses to the occupants. The traders' body now plans to write a letter to NDMC Chairman Naresh Kumar in this regard.

"We are going to organise a meeting of all the occupants, including residents, on Wednesday. We will decide about our demands after we get a feedback from the meeting," Mehra said.

The market houses 156 shops, 40 restaurants and pubs on the first and second floors, eight on the ground floor, and 74 residential units.

The Khan Market Welfare Association of the properties on first and second floors, however, stated that the civic body itself did not give them the new commercial plan after their units were legally converted into commercial spaces.

"The notices we received on Tuesday say the property should adhere to the standard plan. What plan are they talking about? The standard plan dates back to 1983. After that, over the years, the first and second floor units were legally converted into commercial units with minor deviations. But we still haven't received the new commercial layout. We pay Rs 1.14 crore as conversion charges for a single unit. I have sought an RTI reply from the NDMC regarding the new plan," Anhsu Tandon, President of the Khan Market Welfare Association (of properties on first and second floor), said.

"They have not done their job and now want to shift the blame on to us," Tandon, who owns the property leased out to The Big Chill, said.

Meanwhile, a senior NDMC official said: "There is a need to conduct an audit as some residential flats have been modified into shops and restaurants. It is important to check their structural strength."

Last year, the eateries operating from the first and second floors of the posh market had run into trouble for not having fire safety clearances. The Delhi Fire Services had then carried out an inspection of all the buildings in the market. Also, around 10 months ago, the civic body, through IIT-Roorkee, had commissioned a study of the structural capacity of the buildings. Khan Market was established in 1951 to rehabilitate post-Partition refugees.