Ranchi: The blaze at a commercial building housing a gaming and animation firm in Lucknow’s Aliganj on Monday that claimed at least 15 lives has sparked concerns among students and parents over safety norms at hundreds of coaching centres that dot the Jharkhand capital.Ranchi has witnessed a rapid growth of coaching centres in recent times. Along with numerous local institutes, branches of several ones from Delhi, Rajasthan and other major coaching hubs across the country have set up franchises in the city. These institutes prepare aspirants for competitive exams such as NEET-UG, JEE and civil services.Sources said a large number of the institutes function from commercial buildings in densely populated localities. Several such buildings house multiple coaching centres and witness heavy student footfall daily.TOI on Tuesday visited several such coaching centres along the Circular Road area and found that many buildings and coaching centres lack fire safety measures, emergency exits, clear evacuation plans and monitoring by authorities, posing risk to hundreds of lives.An eight-storey commercial building, which houses over 50 coaching centres, was found lacking separate entry and exit points, and had rusted and expired fire extinguishers.“We do not feel safe at all in the building. The Lucknow tragedy has made me apprehensive about fire safety arrangements in place. We have never had mock drills conducted by the administration or by the management for evacuation, if any emergency situation occurs,” Khushi Srivastava, a NEET aspirant, told TOI.A civil services aspirant, Abhimanyu Kumar, said, “The steps are so narrow that if we have to evacuate in an emergency situation, there are possibilities that it could lead to a stampede-like situation.”Coaching centre owners blamed the district administration as they do not regularly monitor firefighting and other safety measures and ensure strict enforcement.“Whenever any accident occurs, the administration becomes active and conducts a monitoring drive. Building owners also are lackadaisical in providing proper fire safety measures. We have our own arrangements for separate entry and exit points to ensure a smooth evacuation. We also changed the fire extinguishers on Tuesday,” Kunal Singh, owner of a coaching centre, said.Members of the Jharkhand Parents Association (JPA) on Tuesday sent a memorandum to education minister Sudivya Kumar and urged the govt to formulate and enforce comprehensive safety guidelines for coaching institutes.“We have sought several measures, including annual renewal of fire safety NOCs of all coaching institutes, schools and private educational institutions, installation of fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, fire alarms and sprinkler systems, provision of at least two emergency exit routes, regular fire drills and disaster management training, installing of CCTV cameras and deployment of security personnel, structural safety certification of buildings, and prohibition on accommodating students beyond the approved capacity,” JPA president Ajay Rai said.