Gurugram Chintels may not go down like Noida twin towers

Manual demolition will likely be carried out to raze the five unsafe towers in Chintels Paradiso instead of controlled blasting, the developer of the project said on Friday. A team of demolition consultants visited the society in Sector 109 on Friday to assess the buildings and outline a plan for the manual demolition, using modern machines and deploying labourers, unlike the controlled implosion that was conducted in case of the Noida Twin Towers.

The developer of the Chintels India Ltd (CIL) said that after a day-long inspection, the consultants asked to barricade all the five towers immediately, stop electricity supply to them, remove water from overhead tanks and clear the soil over basements of affected towers.

A plan to demolish the towers will be given in a week, which will then be submitted to the administration for approval, the developer said. The developer has hired Edifice Engineering, which demolished the Noida twin towers, for the job. Illegally built Supertech twin towers were brought down in Noida in August 2022 in 12 seconds after a series of controlled explosions.

Uttkarsh Mehta, partner, Edifice Engineering, said that a detailed inspection was conducted of the five unsafe towers. “A detailed plan for demolition will be prepared soon and shared with the developer,” he said.

JN Yadav, vice-president, CIL said that the team of experts started the exercise at 10am. “The team has asked us to initiate safety measures in the run-up to the demolition, which is likely to start soon after the approval is given by the district administration. The demolition will be carried out manually as well as machines will be used, as conducting controlled blasts is not safe and viable in the present case. We have been told that it will take around six months to demolish the towers and remove the waste,” said Yadav.

On February 10 last year, six floors of the Tower D had collapsed partially and two women were killed in the incident after which the tower was vacated immediately. The district administration and the department of town and country planning (DTCP) had ordered a structural audit of the entire complex comprising nine towers. As per the report submitted by the experts from IIT Delhi, five out of nine towers have been declared unsafe and these will be demolished by the developer.

On Monday, additional DC Hitesh Kumar Meena issued directions to expedite the demolition and ensure that occupants of flats vacate at the earliest. A DTCP official said: “We will ensure that the entire exercise is carried out safely,” he said.