Despite an official demolition order being issued on May 10, 2016, it was mysteriously cancelled on July 5, 2016.
A catastrophic fire in Lucknow’s Aliganj neighborhood has claimed 15 lives and left nine others injured, exposing a deep web of administrative negligence. Following the tragedy, authorities moved swiftly to arrest four individuals, including building co-owners Ram Krishna Upadhyay, Virendra Prasad Shukla, and Tushar Krishna Jaiswal, alongside Suresh Kumar Sahu.
The incident has brought the Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) under intense scrutiny. It has emerged that the three-story building was marked for demolition in 2016 due to rampant unauthorized construction. Shockingly, this crucial safety order was revoked in less than two months, a lapse that is now the subject of a high-level government investigation into the building’s dubious document trail.
Records show the property was originally allotted to Vijay Kumar in 1980 under a lottery system, eventually passing to the current owners in 2013. Although the 1992-square-foot structure was approved for residential use in 2014, subsequent unauthorized modifications triggered legal action by the LDA in 2016.
Despite an official demolition order being issued on May 10, 2016, it was mysteriously cancelled on July 5, 2016. This administrative reversal allowed the illegal structure to remain, ultimately leading to Monday's deadly inferno.
Government officials confirmed that the site is now sealed as part of a forensic investigation. The probe aims to determine which specific officials were responsible for the 2016 order cancellation, ensuring accountability for the fatal lapse that turned a residential building into a death trap.
