On the first floor of a building in the main market of Satya Niketan is a restaurant. The second floor houses a hotel. The third floor is locked. The fourth floor is a boys’ paying guest accommodation with five rooms, let out on double and triple occupancy. On the fifth, on a terrace lined with garbage and dirt, another room has been built. A telephone tower looms over the structure.

For Arnav Yadav, a first-year student at Motilal Nehru College who moved to this PG in Delhi from Firozabad for higher education, the building has become a source of fear. On Sunday, a PG building in the same neighbourhood had collapsed, killing seven. “I am sure this building is illegal too. I am scared this incident can happen anywhere again in Satya Niketan,” he said.

The building that came down on Sunday housed Hostel Daze, a boys’ PG. The collapse has since set off the familiar machinery of official response. 

In an official release, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi said that it has so far identified 1,355 buildings across Delhi where PG facilities are operational, accommodating approximately 27,000 occupants. The MCD said its enforcement drive covers violations of the Master Plan of Delhi and the building bye-laws, unauthorised construction, misuse of properties and dangerous structures. The release does not specify PG-specific permissions, licences, occupancy limits or safety standards though a proposed Delhi government framework, drawn up after the collapse, seeks to bring PGs under a formal regime.

But what fell in Satya Niketan was as much a building as it was the arrangement that thousands of students in the capital live on top of: a public university that cannot house its own students, and a private market that expanded to fill the gap. Add to the mix a civic compliance system that has looked away. Be it fire-escape requirements to floor limits written into the building bye-laws to the near-total absence of rules on what a PG may charge.

Newslaundry visited PG accommodations and spoke to residents, operators, brokers and landlords in the student neighbourhoods around Delhi University’s North and South campuses to understand how students live, what they pay, and what they give up in order to study in Delhi. 

This is partially because of the lack of public-funded hostels. According to a press release by Delhi University, it had 3,422 hostel seats at the university level. With the proposed addition of 3,922 new seats, the total is set to more than double, to 7,344, across a university with around 90 colleges.

Newslaundry has sent questions to the Delhi University administration on hostel capacity, allotment criteria, eligibility rules and the status of hostels currently under construction. The story will be updated if a response is received.

Life in PGs: tiny rooms, rents from Rs 13,000, no ventilation

Eight major Delhi University colleges are situated in and around Satya Niketan. Of these, only two – Sri Venkateswara College and the Faculty of Arts at South Campus – have hostel facilities. A large number of the rest end up at Satya Niketan, which has 299 houses, several of them operating as PGs.

Newslaundry visited the girls’ PG run by Hostel Daze, located above a restaurant a short distance from the boys’ PG that collapsed. It is a five-storey structure with the ground floor rented out to food shops – the same configuration as the building that came down.

Hostel Daze PG for girls

The four floors above had five rooms each, with a total occupancy of 40, let out as single and double-sharing. Newslaundry was shown a triple-sharing room. It was cramped, with no ventilation, and housed three students. A student living on the first floor of the Hostel Daze girls’ PG, who studies at a nearby nursing institute and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she pays Rs 17,500 for a double-sharing room.

“Since the incident, I do not feel safe living here. I am here to pack my things. I will find accommodation elsewhere…Most of the girls have left and do not want to stay in this PG.” 

The building was front-facing with large windows on its façade, but the rooms themselves had no windows. The passage on every floor was narrow and the stairs extremely steep. Electric wires jutted out near the staircase. The building had a single point of entry and exit. Large black and grey sheets had been hung across the front to cover the Hostel Daze signage, though the logo – the words “Hostel Daze” written across the outline of a house, on a yellow backdrop – remained visible.

Electric wires dangling in the stairwell of Hostel Daze Girls' PG

Delhi’s building bye-laws lay down requirements intended to ensure that occupants can escape safely during a fire. Depending on a building’s height and use, these include multiple staircases, safe means of escape and exits leading directly to the street. As Newslaundry has reported earlier, buildings are also required to have prescribed fire-safety equipment, including fire extinguishers. 

Another PG, in one of the lanes off the main Satya Niketan market, was under MCD inspection when Newslaundry visited on Tuesday. The PG has five floors with four rooms on each, which works out to eight girls per floor. A first-year Delhi University student from Uttarakhand was moving her luggage out with her family. Her father said, “I am taking my daughter back home for a few days. She is unhappy and scared.”

Ren, a third-year........

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