Noida Supertech Twin Tower: Everything you need to know about the demolition process

Noida's skyline will undergo a drastic change at 2:30 pm on Sunday with the demolition of Supertech's illegal twin towers: Apex and Ceyane. Nearly 100-metre-tall structures borne out of corruption will be razed to the ground in nine seconds by using the 'waterfall implosion technique'.

Nearly 3,700 kilograms of explosives will be used by the authorities to tear down Apex (32 storeys) and Ceyane (29 storeys) Supertech twin towers in Sector 93A near the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway. For this demolition, the preparation took nearly seven months, including one month of planning and six months of onsite preparations, said Utkarsh Mehta, CEO of Edifice Engineering.

5000 residents evacuated, 1200 vehicles moved 

Notably, the explosives are placed at beam-wall joint locations so that when the explosives go off, the beams steadily lose the capacity to sustain the weight and collapse. Apex Tower has 11 primary blast floors, where all columns on the floor have explosives, and seven secondary floors, where 60 percent of the columns will be blasted. Ceyane has 10 primary blast floors.

Authorities have covered Supertech's illegal twin towers: Apex and Ceyane with Geotextile Fabric and around 5000 residents have been evacuated. 1200 vehicles have also been moved to safer locations. 

Many residents who live in the neighbouring societies, Emerald Court and ATS village are taking shelters in the Parsvnath Prestige and Purvanchal Silver City, where they will be remaining till the demolition is completely finished and the after-effects have subsided. Arrangements have been made for people inside these societies.

NDRF teams at the demolition site 

According to authorities, the explosion would leave an estimated 55,000 tonnes to 80,000 tonnes of debris which would take upto 3 months to be cleared. The demolition of buildings is unique owing to their height and being built on shear walls, as opposed to usually being built on columns.

Meanwhile, a combined force of NGOs is working to rescue dogs before the Supertech Twin Towers demolition. Around 560 police personnel, 100 people from reserve forces, four Quick Response Teams, and NDRF teams have been deployed at the demolition site. 

Traffic diverted from Noida-Greater Noida Expressway

A green corridor has been established to attend to any emergency situation. DCP Central Rajesh said traffic diversion points have also been activated ahead of the demolition. Noida-Greater Noida Expressway will only be closed right before the blast at around 2.15 pm. It will be opened half an hour after the blast, soon as the dust settles down. All traffic from Noida to Greater Noida via the Yamuna Expressway will be diverted to Sector 37 from the Mahamaya flyover. The traffic will go towards the destination via Noida City Centre and Sector 71. People traveling from Greater Noida to Noida or Delhi will be diverted from Pari Chowk to Surajpur. The traffic will go via Surajpur, Yamaha or Kisan Chowk. 

Why are Noida's Supertech Twin Towers being demolished?

The mammoth task of demolition of the Twin Towers in Supertech's Emerald Project, Sector 93A of Noida will be executed via ‘controlled implosion’, by the Mumbai-based Edifice Engineering which has partnered with South Africa's Jet Demolitions.

The New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (NOIDA) in 2004 allotted Supertech a plot of land measuring 48,263 square metres. The building plan for the construction of ‘Supertech Emerald Court’, each with the ground and nine floors was sanctioned in 2005 under New Okhla Industrial Development Area Building Regulations and Directions, 1986. In 2006, an additional area of 6556.51 sq. metres was allotted to the developer. 

In the same year, after the New Okhla Industrial Development Area Building Regulations and Directions, 2006 was notified, a new and revised plan was sanctioned. The new plan included the construction of two additional floors for the towers, two more towers, and a shopping complex. In 2009, the plan was re-revised to include the twin high-rise buildings — Apex and Ceyane. 

In 2010, the New Okhla Building Industrial Development Area Building Regulations and Directions Area Building Regulations, 2010 came into force, which directed, "Distance between two adjacent building blocks shall be minimum 6 meters to a maximum of 16 meters, depending on the height of the blocks. For building heights up to 18 meters, the distance should be 6 metres and spacing shall be increased by 1 metre for every addition of 3 metres, as per National Building Code 2005."

However, in 2012, the third building plan was sanctioned, by which the height of Ceyane and Apex was permitted to be raised from 24 floors to 40 floors, resulting in the buildings' height being 121 metres. In this case, the distance between the building blocks should have been 16 metres, but it was 9 metres, deficient by 7 metres. 

Thereafter, the CFO addressed a communication to Noida Authority in regards to the violation of the minimum distance between the towers.

Following this, the Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) of the society moved to Allahabad High Court stating that the construction was illegal.  Accordingly, in 2014, the court directed the authority to demolish the twin towers within four months (at its own expense) from the date the order was passed. 

Against the Allahabad High Court's order, the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority and Supertech approached the Supreme Court challenging this order. The apex court upheld the ruling of the Allahabad High Court and ordered the demolition of the buildings within three months. However, the demolition has been delayed for over a year.

The date for demolition has been fixed for August 28, with a “bandwidth of seven days” between August 29 to September 4, 2022, in order to take into account any marginal delay on account of technical reasons or weather conditions.