Mantri report says mall 'safe'; BBMP noncommittal

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is yet to give a clean chit to Mantri Square mall which remains closed since January 16 after its parapet collapsed.

The civic agency has insisted on checking violations of the building plan before restoring the mall’s occupancy certificate. Following the recommendation by the BBMP’s expert committee to reinforce the cantilever beam where the parapet had collapsed, Mantri Developers has submitted a report by a team comprising Gururaj, Bhavesh and Sreenivasa Babu of Innotech Engineering Consult (IEC).

BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said, “We have received Mantri Developers’ response to our expert panel’s report. We will forward it to our expert panel for examination. At the same time, our engineers will check the building plan violations in the mall before restoring the occupancy certification.”

‘Structure is safe’

The IEC has concluded that the entire structure is in order, safe and beneficial for use. “The strength of concrete, steel and the loadings on the structure being checked and design check done with the above criteria for the entire structure is found to be in order and the structure safe and beneficial for use (sic),” it said in the 82-page report.

The IEC has submitted point-by-point response to the observations made by the BBMP’s expert panel on why the parapet collapsed. It agreed that there was corrosion of the cantilever beam but disputed that the quality of the concrete was inferior.

The consultancy agreed that the screed in the cantilever slab area should be removed, including the cooling tower pipes, to reduce the load in the cantilever section. It also agreed that the steel support system should be followed for all the extended slabs on first, second and third floods besides the terrace, in the northwestern corner of the mall to ensure no recurrence of the incident.

Further, all structural steel elements at terrace level should be painted with anti-corrosive paint.