@TK - I bought a apartment near Chandigarh, which I think falls on Zone 4. The apartment has two level underground parking with apartments starting from ground floor going till 19th floor, I am on third floor. After the recent earth quakes I am bit worried about the safety of the structure, the builder is claiming it to be designed for Zone 4 but how can I verify it on my own?

You can approach the builder and ask for the drawings (structural) which he will refuse to give.
Unfortunately in India, you can find it out only when the building colapses. There is no guarentee that the same steel that was specificed to be used was used.

And it is not possible to check / verify the structural stability.

You can see who was the structural engineer and check the credibility of the office. Many offices will design prefectly. Also the builder should be a credible guy who has built as per drawings.

Just to give you an example. I am from the owner's side. We hired an Architect's office to design us a 3 basement + ground + 11 storied office building. The Architect has an inhouse structural engineer. The structural engineer gave us part drawings. After 3 basement+ ground +4 floors, the coproration asked us to stop the building/ After 2 year they gave us permission to go ahead (some by law problem). Now the same structural engineer said that the building was designed for 3 basement+ ground +7 floor only. We asked him to check again. He said, no your building is actually designed for 3 basement + ground + 10 floors and so he asked us to go ahead.

When reaching the last floor slab and when we asked him ti give us the life machine room / water tank / straicase head room details, he refused. By that time, our office had fought with the Architect and we severed ties with him. The same drawings we gave to a Pune based company. They told us that the basement columns were too slender and that we had to strengthen them and only if we did that they will give is the structural drawings requested. So we are in the process of stengthening the columns by providing some steel props attached to the existing RC columns.

Why I am saying is that in India, it is still very vauge. Only the owner has the drawings and he will not give it out that easily. He will try to hide everything till the last moment. There was a twin aparment building under construction in Chennai (G+7) which collpased some 9 months back and still we donot have a report on why it collapsed.

Murali

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.