Maharashtra’s Diwali inferno has exposed the criminal negligence of civic enforcement till now. Be it soaring levels offestive fireworks have long been an annual civic nuisance across cities like Mumbai and Pune. This time, they graduated into a full-blown urban emergency after errant rockets sparked nearly 390 fires across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
Mumbai alone recorded 142 fire calls in a single day, 137 of them triggered by firecrackers. Across the creek in Thane, an eighth-floor blaze at a high-rise raced to the 14th floor, forcing firefighters to rescue 50 trapped residents.
This last straw compelled the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the Thane District Collector to invoke the Disaster Management Act to prohibit aerial rockets across public and private premises in Mumbai until November 25 while Thane’s prohibition runs till January 8, 2027 in keeping with the continuing danger posed by the wedding and New Year seasons.
Authorities have generally treated indiscriminate fireworks as an inevitable inconvenience of festive life, while issuing advisories and warnings that are routinely ignored. In cities like Mumbai and the MMR, where buildings stand cheek by jowl and thousands live in precarious settlements, a misdirected projectile can set an entire slum settlement ablaze.
Launching rockets from narrow lanes or bare hands is no celebration but reckless endangerment of lives. The fact that the state has had to invoke disaster-management powers to regulate what should have been routine policing says everything about the collapse of preventive enforcement.
Pune provides an even more damning indictment of administrative indifference. Despite a pre-Diwali police ban on string-joined laris and deafening atom bombs, and a Bombay High Court order prohibiting street firework, there was no evidence of the Pune Municipal Corporation having deployed a single monitoring squad.
Noise levels rose at every monitoring station in Pune compared with last year, with particularly sharp increases in Aundh Gaon and Laxmi Road, according to the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. Residents were left breathing a toxic cocktail while the municipal machinery that was supposed to protect them was conspicuous by its absence.
A court order that municipal authorities cannot or will not implement is an invitation to contempt. And a civic administration that waits for buildings to catch fire before acting has forfeited any claim to preparedness. Maharashtra cannot keep governing its cities through emergency decrees issued after the damage is done. Mumbai and Thane’s restrictions cannot become substitutes for sustained enforcement.
Violators must face meaningful penalties and municipal corporations must be held accountable for monitoring and compliance. The right to celebrate cannot extend to endangering the lives, homes and health of millions. The authorities should not be discovering their responsibilities after the lit fuse has done the damage.
