The inspections of hotels and guest house over fire safety measures got stricter after a fire at a hotel called Shikha Inn in Kolkata’s Mirza Ghalib Street killed at least nine people, including seven Bangladeshi nationals. File
| Photo Credit: PTI
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation has issued a temporary closure notice to 919 hotels and guest houses for violating fire safety norms in the city. Out of the 960 establishments that were inspected, only 41 of them have made the final cut for fire safety measures. Reacting to these closures, Kolkata Municipal Corporation Commissioner Smita Pandey said that the safety of people is non-negotiable. “There is nothing to do here. There is a bare minimum mandate, they have to have fire entry exits The inspections of hotels and guest house over fire safety measures got stricter after a fire at a hotel called Shikha Inn in Kolkata’s Mirza Ghalib Street killed at least nine people, including seven Bangladeshi nationals. The incident raised major fire safety concerns in the city, especially in the area which houses hundreds of small hotels. Over the past few weeks, many of these hotels have seen locks on their doors, with some of their shutters down. Many of the tourists who throng to this part of Kolkata in Park Street and Esplanade area are from Bangladesh who are in the city for medical tourism. Many have complained that the prices for the remaining few open hotels have shot up drastically.“Some of us have been running these hotels for 40-60 years but the buildings are over 100-150 years old. The fire department is asking for the original building plan to give us fire safety recommendations or further plan of action. We do not have any issue with that, but we are renting these places from the owners, we do not have access to such old documents of building plans,” Mantosh Kumar Saha, a local hotel owner in Mirza Ghalib Street, told The Hindu on Wednesday (September 9, 2026). However, Mr. Saha also added that none of the hotel owners will do any business outside the rule of law and have closed their shutters till they get any form of go-ahead to open for business. The lack of accessibility to building plans has left many of the hotel owners in a limbo. Fire audits in malls During the increased vigilance of the State government on fire safety, authorities have also started to conduct simultaneous audits on shopping malls and complexes. Some of the major shopping malls in Kolkata and its adjoining areas saw fire safety audits on Wednesday (September 9, 2026). Popular shopping malls like South City, Mani Square, Star, Hiland Park, Acropolis, and others saw fire safety checks. Published - September 10, 2026 10:54 am IST
