Civic authorities launched a drive against student hostels operating without permission on Wednesday and pulled up two girls’ hostels that could not produce mandatory NOCs.

According to Dhanbad Municipal Corporation (DMC) estimates, as many as 200 private hostels are in operation in the five corporation circles of Jharia, Sindri, Dhanbad, Katras and Chhatatand.

A DMC team, led by city manager Bijay Kumar, inspected the two girls’ hostels on Luby Circular Road to find that they did not have fire fighting equipment and first-aid kits. The hostels were not even offering boarders filtered drinking water.

The team first visited Golu Girls Hostel at Hem Tower at 9.30am and then moved to Shubham Girls Hostel, about 200 meter away. Corporation officials sought NOCs, but owners of both hostels but could not produce them.

However, the owner of Shubham Hostel claimed he had applied for an NOC and showed the officials a copy of an application he had submitted to DMC in March.

“We detected several anomalies during the inspection. Besides lack of mandatory NOCs, the hostels were not paying commercial tax as per norms. One of the hostels, Shumbham Girls Hostel, had 25 inmates, while it had sought permission to operate a hostel for 20,” Kumar told The Telegraph.

He said DMC would continue the drive against hostels operating without mandatory permissions.

Kumar said most of the 200 hostels operating in the five circles of DMC, had various lacunae. These were spread over Housing Colony, Manoram Nagar, Luby Circular Road, Hirapur, Chiragora and Bartand.

Last year in July, DMC carried out a similar inspection drive during which 13 hostels operating out of Maroram Nagar, Housing Colony and Luby Circular Road were checked. Most of them did not have NOCs. They lacked basic facilities too.

“Almost 90 per cent of hostels were operating without NOCs prior to last year’s drive,” noted Kumar, adding, however, that DMC received a large number of applications following the drive.

After that, the percentage of registered hostels increased to around 30, he added.

“As a commercial institution, such hostels have to pay annual property tax which will depend on their area (in square feet) and availability of other provisions like fire safety devices and filtered drinking water. Every staff member of the hostel should be verified by police, too,” Kumar said.

According to rules under Jharkhand Municipality Act-2011, annual NOC charges for a 1 to 10 bed hostel is Rs 800, while for a 11 to 20, 21 to 50, and more than 50 bed hostel the charges are Rs 1,000, Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000 respectively.

Additional municipal commissioner of Dhanbad Sadip Kumar said DMC would continue to take tough measures against hostels operating without NOCs. “We will serve notices to hostels operating without NOC as we are also losing revenue since these hostels do not pay property tax.”