The Satya Niketan building collapse demands accountability, but accountability cannot begin and end with identifying the officer occupying the chair when tragedy struck

When a building collapses and lives are lost, the first instinct is to find someone to blame. The more difficult — and far more important - task is to determine who was actually responsible.

The tragedy at a PG accommodation in Satya Niketan has rightly triggered public anger and demands for accountability. There can be no argument with the need for answers when human lives are lost. But accountability must follow facts, law and evidence. It cannot become a predetermined search for an individual to carry the burden of a failure that may have developed over years and involved several institutions. This is particularly relevant to the intense media scrutiny of the incumbent Commissioner. The question is not whether a Commissioner should be accountable. Of course, he should. The real question is: accountable for what?

A Commissioner can reasonably be held responsible for decisions taken under his authority, failures to act where a clear statutory duty existed, matters specifically brought to his notice, and enforcement powers that were lawfully available to him. If evidence establishes that a dangerous condition was known to the competent authority, that there was a legal power to intervene, and that an avoidable failure occurred during his tenure, scrutiny is not only justified but necessary.

But accountability has boundaries.

An incumbent Commissioner cannot automatically be held personally responsible for every unauthorised construction that predates his tenure, every historical enforcement failure, every........

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