The year 2026 got off to a sorry start for the elevator industry with a 31-year-old security guard crushed to death when a lift collapsed on him in a Mulund East (Mumbai) housing society, and two boys, aged 11, grievously injured by falling into a lift duct when the third floor lift door in their Goregaon (Mumbai) building gave way. Faulty door-lock wiring and poor maintenance by the vendor are most probably behind these tragic accidents.No month goes by without a fatal elevator accident in some city across India. CW asks why?Regulatory gaps For starters, “regulations should be lifecycle-based,” says Rajnikant Lad, Founder, Elevator Auditor & Elevator Safety Awareness Forum, and Chairman Building Transportation Safety (Fire & Security Association of India, FSAI). “India lacks clear norms for age-based risk evaluation, mandatory modernisation thresholds and obsolescence management,” he continues. “Consequently, 30-40-year-old elevators often continue operating with outdated safety systems.”In the absence of a “harmonised national framework,” Lad says, “elevator rules across states are inconsistently enforced, causing uneven safety standards.”Some states/UTs still don’t have a dedicated lift inspectorate to inspect new installations and provide a license to operate, and later also mandate an annual service inspection for the renewal of licence, adds Rajnish Ramu, Managing Director, Lerch Bates.Safety norms differ from region to region, agrees Vatsal Vazir, Head of Design, CCI Projects.India also lacks a centralised database for elevator and escalator accident and near-miss incidents, which would enable systematic trend analysis, adds Lad. “Without data, the same failures repeat.”Audit utilityRoutine preventive maintenance is widely seen as a sound proactive strategy to keep elevators and escalators in top condition. By throwing up issues that need to be addressed, such intervention reduces the risk of serious mechanical breakdowns, ensuring consistent safety and performance. Additionally, many elevator vendors conduct annual internal audits. Preventive maintenance and audits must be differentiated between, although they are closely associated. As Sandeep Ahuja, Global CEO, Atmosphere Living, explains “Audits guide preventive maintenance, modernisation or replacement decisions, particularly where safety, wait times and service steadiness are impacted.”The concern is, “having an elevator inspected by the OEM or agency responsible for maintenance creates a conflict of interest,” according to Lad. “For property owners and managers,” he says, “the real value of an elevator or escalator audit lies in getting exact information about user safety, the equipment status, where it is in its lifecycle and whether it needs upgradation or major repairs, which only a reputed third-party neutral auditor can genuinely provide.”However, “independent, third-party safety audits – common internationally – are still not uniformly mandated in India,” he adds.Industry views differ on who the elevator audit should be entrusted to. According to TAK Mathews, Director, TAK Consulting, it’s sufficient for elevators and escalators to be audited by a separate internal audit team of the maintenance company once a year. “Over dependency on external third-party audits is misplaced,” he avers.Mathews reasons, “An audit only provides a snapshot of the equipment at the particular point of time and insights into the adequacy of the maintenance being provided and inadequacies in the context of the latest standards. The auditor will require decades of hands-on experience to arrive at a conclusion on the history of the equipment as well as predict the future trend. Even then, an auditor with limited access to design and sourcing data and limited time will not be able to accurately verify the design calculations and the quality of material involved.”Frequency and beyondWhile audits are generally recommended to be carried out once a year as an industry best-practice process, the industry practice is to schedule at random 20 per cent against the number of elevator assets (by surprise), says Simon David, Director, South India – Real Estate Management Services, Colliers India.Safety audits in a high-rise city like Mumbai should be conducted at least once a year, according to Vazir. Ahuja recommends “six-monthly audits at a minimum, with quarterly routine and safety checks in high-traffic hospitality assets.”Ramu also recommends an annual audit. Thereafter, depending on the severity of the audit findings, customers in consultation with the auditor should decide on whether the defects are repairable or need replacement at a component level or of the entire system, he explains.In most cases, he says, the snags are generally repairable and can be repaired with improvement in services from the maintenance company. “But in some cases of abject neglect or very aged equipment, replacement may become necessary. In some instances, obsolescence and paucity of spares availability may push towards replacement. Sometimes a change in user requirements may necessitate a modification or upgrade.”The key is to “treat audits as strategic tools rather than compliance rituals,” continues Lad. Then, the tool can prevent accidents, optimise investments and, most important, save lives, while a careless approach to maintenance and noncompliance with safety norms, usually to save costs, are often implicated in elevator accidents.Audits of 15-20-year-old elevators, by Lad, for the Mahindra Great Eastern Gardens at Kanjurmarg, Mumbai, and Gokul Gagan Cooperative Housing Society in Kandivali East, Mumbai, have helped increase the life of these machines by a decade – and counting.At Rivali Park, a large integrated development by CCI Projects in Mumbai, where vertical movement supports everyday living across several towers, “audits help make informed decisions on capacity planning and maintenance approaches, as well as the timing of upgrades, rather than short-term fixes,” shares Vazir.Notably, regulatory gaps don’t cover instances where corrective action is delayed or omitted even after audits highlight their need. User educationUser education through signage, campaigns and digital alerts is still minimal despite many accidents occurring not from equipment failure but from forcing doors, overloading and using the elevator during a fire or flooding, observes Lad.A good example of this is the fatal accident of a 25-year-old employee of a hotel in Zirakpur, near Chandigarh, in December 2025. The young man fell to his death in the lift duct when he tried to force open the door when the lift stopped midway between floors.Missing featuresIndia doesn’t lack any products in the elevator/escalator market as long as these are designed, manufactured, installed and maintained as per the relevant IS codes and the NBC, points out Ramu. While he says all the major and most of the smaller vertical transportation equipment companies adhere to these codes, some operators who do not fully comply can pose risks.Vazir calls out inconsistencies in India’s vertical solution market as a concern, pointing out that “despite better technology being available, elevators and escalators still lack basic warning systems for any possible malfunctioning before the occurrence of a breakdown.” Smart, predictive maintenance-enabled systems haven’t been widely adopted in India, agrees Ahuja, adding that “hospitality-use machines need greater customisation, the seamless integration with building management systems is still subpar and guest-centric design innovation needs to improve.”“Soft stop features should be made standard across all elevators and escalators to prevent sudden stoppage jerks in the event of power failure,” adds Rajesh Nair, Senior Vice President - Purchase, Engineering Brigade Group.While Mathews believes India has access to the entire array of elevators and escalators, he says buyers tend to economise and don’t buy what a project needs. For instance, they will lower speeds, avoid double-deck elevators or twin elevators, etc, even when those solutions are needed.“Quite often the cost of installation influences the decision,” agrees Vazir.How much longer will it take for quality and safety to be prioritised over cost? The answer appears to be up in the air.