SDMC for conditional occupancy certificate to DDCA for T20 WC

Civic authorities today agreed to grant DDCA an occupancy certificate for Ferozshah Kotla stadium here on the condition that it ensures compliance of 60 safety related issues within 20 days, brightening chances for hosting of the T20 World Cup matches at the venue.
The Delhi and District Cricket Administration (DDCA) will also have to furnish a bank draft of Rs 50 lakh as "security" deposit which will be "forfeited" if it fails to ensure compliance of safety aspects, officials at South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) said.
The decision by the SDMC to issue the conditional certificate came hours after Delhi High Court asked the civic body whether it can give the permission to host the matches if DDCA complies with the safety measures within three weeks. The SDMC will inform the court tomorrow about its decision.

The court also observed that a conditional final occupancy certificate cannot be granted, adding that it does not want anyone to say later that something untoward happened there due to lack of compliances or due to some minor deviation.
"We should adhere to the highest standards," it said.
Radhey Shyam Sharma, chairman of the the standing committee of SDMC, today said that the committee has "decided to issue a conditional occupancy certificate to DDCA giving it 20 days time to complete work on all the 60 safety related points notified earlier."

He said DDCA has submitted that it has started work on 30 of the 60 safety related points of the stadium furnishing photographs of work and sought more time for complying with SDMC's instructions.

"They have said work was started on 30 safety related points and sought three more weeks to wrap up work on all points. We extended 20 days time to them keeping in view significance of T20 World Cup," he added.
The BCCI on February 5 had given DDCA a deadline till today to procure all required compliance certificates for hosting its share of the World Twenty20 matches.
Failure of the DDCA to get an occupancy certificate for the stadium had created uncertainty over hosting of the matches in Delhi.
DDCA had lost out on hosting an India-Sri Lanka match at the stadium on February 12.

The high court on November 18, 2015, while allowing DDCA to hold the India-South Africa test at Kotla, had directed it to obtain all clearances and NOCs from local authorities, including L&DO, by March 31 this year.
DDCA has also said that work was in progress regarding the corrections in deviations in the present structure of the stadium as pointed out by SDMC, and everything would be completed within three weeks.
The DDCA has informed SDMC that 80 per cent "rectification" work at the stadium which was pointed out earlier by the SDMC has been completed and remaining 20 per cent work will be completed in maximum 2-3 weeks.

Vice president of DDCA Chetan Chauhan in his letter to Sharma also claimed that the SDMC engineers and officials who visited Ferozshah Kotla stadium were "satisfied" with the rectification work, requesting for issuing the occupancy certificate.
The BCCI has allotted 10 T20 matches, six of women and four of men, to be hosted by DDCA from March 15.