Buyer Guides · August 31, 2026
What Should a Lift Safety Audit Cover? The 47-Point Check
By Yajvin Tandon · Director
Last updated August 31, 2026
In July 2026 the Supreme Court ruled that a lift is a common carrier, and that the manufacturer, the maintenance agency and the building owner are jointly liable for passenger safety. This is what a serious audit checks, point by point.
In Short
The liability question was settled in July 2026 — the Supreme Court held that a lift is a common carrier, and that the manufacturer, the maintenance agency and the building owner are jointly and severally liable for passenger safety.
A serious audit is not a walk-around — 47 checkpoints across 8 systems, each tied to the clause of law or code that demands it.
Every point gets one of four verdicts — pass, watch, fail, or not applicable, each recorded against a named clause.
The output is a signed document — counts, critical items, a risk classification and two signatures. Something a committee can table at an AGM.
Span's 47-point audit is free in Delhi NCR — call +91 98106 12213.
A proper lift safety audit covers eight systems and forty-seven checkpoints: mechanical and drive, electrical and controller, doors and door-safety sensors, the mandatory IS 17900 safety devices, the car interior, the shaft and pit, statutory documentation, and emergency preparedness. Each point is assessed against a named clause and recorded as pass, watch, fail or not applicable, and the audit closes with a signed risk classification.
Why Does This Matter More Than It Did Last Year?
Because the law moved twice in eight months, and both moves point the same way.
IS 17900 became the operative standard for lifts in Delhi on 22 December 2025, replacing the codes that governed every older installation in the city. Protections that never existed before — unintended car movement, ascending overspeed, a battery rescue device — became the baseline rather than an upgrade.
Then, on 29 July 2026, the Supreme Court decided Otis Elevator Company (India) Ltd v. Rashmi Handa. It held that a lift is a common carrier, reasoning that passengers surrender control of their own safety the moment they step into one, and therefore deserve a higher standard of protection. The practical consequence is the part every building committee should read twice: the manufacturer, the maintenance agency and the owner of the premises are jointly and severally liable for lift safety. A victim no longer has to establish which of the three was negligent before seeking compensation.
The judgment upheld a compensation award of roughly ₹3.01 crore plus interest, arising from a fatal lift accident, apportioned seventy percent to the manufacturer, twenty-five percent to the maintenance agency, and five percent to the department managing the building.
Read that apportionment again. A quarter of the liability landed on the company that maintained the lift. Whoever holds your AMC is now, as a matter of settled law, a party to your safety — which makes the choice of that company a governance decision, not a procurement one.
How Common Is This, Really?
Common enough that most residents have a story. A LocalCircles survey of lift users in Noida and Greater Noida found that eighty-three percent had a family member stuck in a lift within three years — against a national average of fifty-eight percent. A larger 2026 survey found that forty-six percent of apartment residents had been trapped at least once in the preceding year.
Entrapment is simply the visible end of it. Worn door equipment, a rescue device that no longer rescues, a maintenance regime that exists only on paper — the same causes that leave a family stuck between floors on a Tuesday evening produce the incidents nobody wants to read about.
What Does a Proper Lift Safety Audit Cover?
Forty-seven checkpoints, grouped into eight systems. The grouping matters as much as the count, because it is what stops an inspection from drifting toward whatever is easiest to reach.
Mechanical and drive systems, eight point — traction machine condition including vibration and noise, suspension ropes and belts with a broken-strand count, sheave groove wear, main brake operation and holding capacity, counterweight assembly, guide rails and shoes, oil leakage, and machine-room temperature and ventilation.
Electrical and controller systems, six points — controller health and fault-history download, VVVF drive parameters, earthing and insulation resistance by megger, phase sequence and phase-failure protection, travelling cable condition, and continuity of the emergency stop circuit and safety chain.
Door systems and door-safety sensors, six points — landing door interlocks tested at every floor, car door operator force test, the light curtain or safety edge, retiring cam engagement, door reopening behaviour, and sill and threshold alignment.
IS 17900 mandatory safety devices, seven points — unintended car movement protection, ascending car overspeed protection, pit and car-top refuge spaces, overspeed governor calibration, safety-gear drop-test certification, buffers, and final limit switches.
Car interior and cabin, five points — cabin and emergency lighting, ventilation, the emergency stop and alarm bell, the two-way intercom tested with a live call, and the car-top inspection switch.
Shaft, pit and top clearance, four points — pit cleanliness including water ingress and oil pollution, pit ladder and stop switch, top-of-car technician clearance, and shaft lighting and ventilation.
Statutory compliance and documentation, seven points — registration, an active AMC with a registered agency, the rescue device, CCTV and insurance where the premises require them, twelve months of maintenance logbook entries, and the compliance certificate.
Emergency preparedness and rescue, four points — the bi-annual mock entrapment drill record, a live rescue-device test under power failure, the rescue procedure displayed in the cabin and at the main landing, and the accident reporting protocol: District Magistrate, authority and police within twenty-four hours, plus a 24×7 contact list.
Six of those eight sections are invisible to a resident. That is the point. The car interior is the only part of a lift most people ever see, and it is five points out of forty-seven.
What Do Pass, Watch and Fail Actually Mean?
Every checkpoint receives one of four verdicts, and the middle one is the useful one.
Pass — meets the referenced code. No action required.
Watch — functional today, with measurable degradation recorded. Re-inspect at the next service. This is where a rope that is wearing, or a brake lining that is thinning, gets caught while it is still cheap.
Fail — does not meet the referenced code. Corrective action required.
Not applicable — genuinely does not apply to this installation type.
A report with no "watch" entries anywhere is not a clean lift. It is usually a shallow inspection.
Which Points Carry Statutory Force?
Some checkpoints are engineering judgement. Others are law, and a failure on one of them is a different category of problem.
Under IS 17900, unintended car movement protection, ascending car overspeed protection and refuge spaces in the pit and on the car top are mandatory requirements, not upgrades.
Under the Uttar Pradesh Lifts and Escalators Act 2024 — which governs Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad — registration is mandatory, an automatic rescue device is mandatory, an annual maintenance contract is mandatory, bi-annual mock evacuation drills must be conducted, defect rectifications must be recorded in the maintenance logbook, and any accident must be reported to the District Magistrate, the authority and the local police within twenty-four hours. Registration is renewed every five years, with annual testing.
Two further requirements carry a qualifier worth knowing precisely: under the Act, CCTV is required in lifts installed in public premises, and insurance is mandatory for public premises — with government premises exempted from the insurance requirement. If your building's classification is unclear, establish it before an inspector does.
In Delhi, the Lift Rules and IS 17900 govern, and compliance systems here are comparatively stronger than in several other states — which also means a non-compliant lift in Delhi is likelier to be found than one elsewhere.
What Do You Get at the End?
A signed document, which is the entire point. The audit closes with the site and lift details, the inspector's name and licence number, the counts of points passed, on watch, failed and not applicable, the critical items noted, the next inspection date, and an overall risk classification.
Green, compliant— no failures, three or fewer items on watch. Routine maintenance continues.
Amber, degraded — one to four failures, none on a mandatory item. Corrective work within thirty days.
Red, non-compliant — any failure on a mandatory item, or five or more failures overall. Immediate remediation, with use restricted until cleared.
Two signatures close it: the society's representative and the inspector. That gives a committee something it can table at an AGM, hand to an insurer, or produce if anyone ever asks what the building knew and when it knew it.
After the July judgment, a dated and signed record of the lift's condition stops being a filing convenience. It is evidence.
One visit. Forty-seven answers. A signed record you can table at the next AGM.
A Span engineer walks the installation from machine room to pit, marks every checkpoint against the clause that governs it, and leaves you with the completed audit record and risk classification.
Call +91 98106 12213 · Landline 011-4907-1372 · WhatsApp the same number
Engineered to Elevate. Designed to Endure.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Who is liable if someone is injured in a lift in India?
- Since the Supreme Court's judgment of 29 July 2026, a lift is treated as a common carrier, and the manufacturer, the maintenance agency and the owner of the premises are jointly and severally liable for passenger safety. A claimant does not need to first establish which of them was negligent. In the case decided, liability was apportioned seventy percent to the manufacturer, twenty-five percent to the maintenance agency and five percent to the department managing the building
- Is a safety audit the same as a statutory inspection?
- No. An audit is a detailed engineering and compliance assessment that tells you where the lift stands and what to correct. Statutory inspection and certification are carried out by the competent authority. The audit supports that process, and makes it far less likely to produce surprises, but it does not replace it
- How long does a 47-point audit take?
- A single visit for most passenger lifts. The inspector walks the installation from machine room to pit, marks every checkpoint against the relevant code, and closes with the sign-off page. Buildings with several lifts or missing documentation take longer, because the documentation is part of the audit
- We have an AMC. Isn't this already being done?
- Ask for the records and find out. A maintenance visit and a compliance audit are different exercises: one keeps the lift running, the other establishes whether it meets the code and produces a document saying so. Ask your agency for twelve months of logbook entries and a clause-level status for the lift. What comes back, and how quickly, tells you most of what you need to know.
- Does an old lift automatically fail?
- No. Age is not a verdict; condition and code compliance are. Plenty of older installations pass on the mechanical points and fail on documentation or a missing rescue device, both of which are correctable. The audit exists to tell you which is which, so money goes where the risk actually is