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Two 100-metre-tall towers located in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida are set to be demolished after being found to have been built illegally. The towers will be the tallest in the country to be brought down. How did things come to such a pass? This is the story of Noida’s Supertech Twin Towers.
On August 28, the city of Noida in Uttar Pradesh will host a spectacle: More than 3,500 kgs of explosives filled in over 9,000 holes will bring down two high-rise towers. If all goes well, the 100-metre towers – popularly known as the Supertech Twin Towers – will fall like a pack of cards.
The controlled implosion will bring to an end a decade-long legal battle waged by residents who stay just metres away from the notorious structure. On August 31 last year, the Supreme Court of India held the towers, constructed by the builder Supertech Limited, to be illegal and ordered that they be brought down.
How did things reach such a stage? Let’s go back to the 2000s.
In the mid-2000s, Noida-based builder Supertech Limited launched a housing project called Emerald Court. Located off the expressway that connects the twin cities of Noida and Greater Noida, the housing society is made up of 3, 4 &5 BHK flats that have a current going rate of between Rs 1 crore and Rs 3 crore on real estate websites.
At the time of its inception in June 2005, the Emerald Court project was to have 14 nine-storied towers, according to plans submitted by the builder and approved by the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (Noida). By 2012, plans had changed. Emerald Court was now a complex of 15 buildings of 11 storeys and two towers rising to 40 floors above ground.
The latter two would rise not to the planned 40 floors but to national infamy.
The Emerald Court fiasco revolves around what residents say was a false promise: An assured ‘green’ area near the housing society that eventually became the ground on which Ceyane and Apex – the Twin Towers at the heart of the fiasco – would rise.
According to court records, until December 2006, when Supertech first modified its June 2005 building plans for Emerald Court, the housing complex was to have a triangular green area in front of Tower #1. This green area was also mentioned in two other documents – dated April 2008 and September 2009 – relating to the completion of some Emerald Court towers.
Things changed in November 2009 when Supertech revised its building plans for the second time and birthed two 24-storey towers that would now be part of the project. Crucially, the towers – Ceyane and Apex – would come up on that very triangular green area mentioned in the older documents.
The third revision of building plans took place in March 2012. Emerald Court was now a project consisting of 15 towers of 11 storeys, and Ceyane and Apex had their heights extended from 24 floors to 40 floors.
Residents of Emerald Court started making noises about Ceyane and Apex sometime in mid-2012. The residents wrote to Noida saying that the Twin Towers were being constructed illegally and that Supertech had lied to them. The residents asked the Authority to cancel the approvals granted for the construction of Ceyane and Apex.
In December 2012, the residents knocked on the doors of the Allahabad High Court requesting that the court order the demolition of the two towers. The Allahabad High Court agreed and in April 2014, ordered that the Noida Twin Towers be brought down. Quite expectedly, Supertech appealed against the verdict and the matter reached the Supreme Court of India.
In front of the court were two counter-claims. Supertech’s assertion was that the Noida Twin Towers were being constructed in compliance with all laid down laws and that the Emerald Court residents did not have any right to object in the first place.
On the other hand, residents of Emerald Court were alleging that the Twin Towers ran afoul of a bunch of building construction norms and that the builder had no right to make changes to the housing society’s project plans without their permission.
While hearing the matter, Supreme Court Justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah considered several points: Were the Twin Towers dangerously close to the existing buildings of the Emerald Court project? Were the building construction laws violated in the process of granting approvals for Ceyane and Apex? And, very interestingly, what was the definition of the term ‘building block’?
On August 31, 2021, the two-judge Supreme Court bench ruled in favour of the residents of Emerald Court. The court held that the Supertech Twin Towers were indeed illegal and that approvals granted to the two towers were a result of “collusion” and a “nefarious complicity” between officers of Noida and the builder Supertech.
The court ordered the following:
What followed was the usual legal drama. Supertech asked the Supreme Court to review its August 31, 2021 order. Several back-and-forth hearings as well as concerns about the safety of Emerald Court’s residents saw the deadline for the demolition getting pushed back periodically.
However, the Supreme Court refused to change its stand on the base issue: The Supertech Twin Towers were illegal and there was no other option except for them to go.
And so, here we are. If the weather holds fine and the winds don’t pose a threat, a team of experts from Edifice Engineering will bring down the Noida Twin Towers on August 28. These will be the tallest such buildings to be demolished in India.
To carry out the task, Edifice Engineering, a Mumbai-based firm that previously demolished four illegal apartments near Kochi in Kerala, will employ a technique called implosion. More than 3,500 kgs of explosives will be placed inside holes drilled in specific parts of the building structure that supports Ceyane and Apex. The detonation will take place from the ground up – that is, the explosives placed on the ground floor will go off first. Then those set on the first floor and so on.
The net effect will be that the Twin Towers will fall inwards with each floor collapsing onto the one below. This will ensure that the debris of the two towers does not fly outwards and instead remains confined within its own footprint.
While the Supreme Court order on the Supertech Twin Towers has been welcomed by most quarters, especially the residents of Emerald Court, a silent refrain has been: What is the need to demolish the half-constructed towers? Couldn’t the builder have been fined heavily and the towers taken over by the government and used for a social cause? For example, providing housing for the poor?
The counter to that argument has been that the level of illegality and corruption involved in the construction of the Twin Towers cannot go unpunished. Only exemplary action such as demolishing the towers can ensure that such a criminal enterprise does not take shape again.
Other questions remain. What will happen to the several thousand tonnes of rubble that Ceyane and Apex will be reduced to after the demolition? The answers to this are unclear. From recycling to dumping in landfills, all options were on the table days ahead of D-Day, and the final debris management plan is yet to see the light of day.
And, finally, what about the residents of Emerald Court, some of whom stay metres away from the Twin Towers, and other nearby housing societies? On that front, at least, the plans are in place. During the period of the demolition, the 5,000-odd residents staying nearby will be asked to stay away from their homes and the expressway that passes through nearby will be shut down for traffic.
The promise is that none of the towers located nearby will suffer any damage and that the environment around will suffer no harm.
The hope is that this promise will not turn out like the promise of the green area that sparked the Twin Tower mess in the first place.
Creative Director: Rahul Gupta