Open Ground Storey (OGS) buildings are the popular building typ\ology seen in the urban areas as they provide the much-needed parking space to the users. Due to their inherent seismic vulnerability owing to vertical irregularity, much of the damage occurs in the first few stories of such buildings. In the aftermath of Bhuj earthquake, the revised version the Indian seismic code (IS 1893) makes a criterion for strengthening/stiffening of such structures. An open ground storey building designed as per IS 1893 is evaluated using a multi-level reliability based approach. An alternative to the code-prescribed approach is proposed wherein the drift at the first floor is estimated and a simplified direct displacement-based method of analysis is followed to arrive at the equivalent lateral load profile for the OGS buildings.The seismic performance of such OGS building conforming to the proposed approach is assessed subsequently using SAC-FEMA method. © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, London.