The West Bengal government has launched a review of its hotel and lodge licensing framework following two devastating fire incidents last week — one at Tarapith in Birbhum district and another at Mirza Ghalib Street, Kolkata — that together claimed 18 lives, with nine deaths recorded in each incident. State authorities are now working to identify and correct systemic flaws in the chain of permissions granted to hotels, lodges, and guesthouses across the state.

How the Flawed System Developed

An insider from the State Fire Services Department told reporters that during the previous administration, a policy decision was made to decentralise the granting of two critical permissions: fire safety certificates (also known as Fire NOCs) and fire licences. The move was reportedly aimed at accelerating the pace of licence issuance.

Under that framework, two significant changes were introduced. First, a self-declaration system was put in place, allowing hotel and lodge owners to submit their own compliance declarations. Second, station officers of individual fire service stations were empowered to issue both fire safety certificates and fire licences directly to applicants who submitted such self-declarations — without independent verification.

A Chain of Near-Automatic Approvals

'By virtue of fire safety certificates and fire licences received from the station officers, the owners of such hospitality entities managed to get trade licences and electricity connections easily without virtually any sort of cross-checks either by the civic bodies or by the power generation companies,' the departmental official said.

In effect, once a fire safety certificate and fire licence were in hand, the subsequent steps — obtaining a trade licence from the relevant civic body and securing an electricity connection from the power distribution company — became near-automatic. Critics argue this created a system where safety compliance was assumed rather than verified at each stage.

Proposed Policy Changes

According to the state fire services official, the new government is now considering multi-level checks across the entire licensing chain. The primary reform under discussion is ending the absolute authority of station officers to independently issue fire safety certificates and fire licences. Instead, these approvals would require two-stage verification — first at the station officer level and then by one or two tiers of senior authority above them.

A second proposal would end the near-automatic grant of trade licences and electricity connections based solely on fire clearances. Under the proposed framework, civic bodies and power distribution companies would be required to conduct their own independent checks before granting approvals, reducing the risk of non-compliant establishments operating undetected.

What Fire Safety Certificates and Fire Licences Mean

The official also clarified the distinction between the two key documents. A fire safety certificate, or Fire NOC, confirms that a building meets local fire safety codes and architectural safety norms. A fire licence, by contrast, is a formal operational permit issued for specific commercial activities or industrial processes. Both are foundational to a hospitality establishment's legal operation — and both, under the previous system, could be obtained with minimal scrutiny.

What Comes Next

The state government's review is ongoing, and formal policy changes are yet to be announced. The twin tragedies at Tarapith and Kolkata have intensified pressure on authorities to act swiftly. How quickly the proposed reforms are codified — and whether they extend to retrospective audits of already-licensed establishments — will determine whether the overhaul translates into meaningful accountability.