The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) will hire a consultant to determine the most suitable method to demolish the Signature View Apartments located in North Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar, sources aware of the matter told Moneycontrol.
They said that the authority plans to complete the demolition of the 12-storey structures by June-July 2024. The authority, which is responsible for planning and developing the national capital, is also holding consultation with industry experts on the subject.
The consultant will conduct site inspections and detailed surveys to understand the challenges and then determine the possible demolition technique, a controlled implosion on lines of what was carried out at the Supertech twin towers in the Delhi satellite city Noida or opt for the manual method.
“To decide which method should we chose to demolish the Signature View Apartment; we will appoint a consultant by the end of October. The consultant will submit a report after studying the challenges that may arise. In the report the consultant will suggest the best methods to be adopted for the demolition of the buildings,” a DDA source said.
He said that the Signature View Apartment housing complex is located in a densely populated area and there are also a number of commercial establishments in the vicinity. Hence, it is important to keep these factors in mind while choosing the most secure method to bring down the structures.
The Signature View Apartment Complex was built during 2007-10 by DDA and delivery started in 2012. The housing complex has 12 towers ranging from 6-12 floors. In 2021-22, a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, at the behest of DDA, found that the building was “structurally unsafe”, and suggested that the best option was to “vacate and dismantle” the complex.
Following complaints from residents, the lieutenant governor of Delhi on January 24 this year asked DDA to redevelop the housing complex and “rehabilitate the residents in the interim”.
A senior DDA official said that the demolition process can only be started after the complex is entirely vacated and handed over to the authority. “The entire process of demolition will take some time as the buildings are yet to be vacated by the residents. Preparations for demolition would start as soon as the complex is vacated. We have asked the residents to vacate the premises at the earliest.”
Some 1,300-1,400 people are still staying in the Signature View Apartment housing complex, consisting of 336 flats.
Sources said that apart from holding internal discussions, the DDA has also approached the agency that demolished the twin towers in Noida’s sector 93A last year to determine the possible way of demolishing these structures.
Possible options
Experts said that detailed inspections would have to be carried out to understand the challenges and then take an informed decision on the best option. They said that it will also depend on the factors like time, safety and cost.
They added that there are mainly three methods used for demolition, which include controlled implosion, manual demolition and demolition using heavy-duty machinery.
Supertech’s twin towers Apex (32 storeys) and Ceyane (29 storeys), were razed via the controlled implosion technique in August 2022 in Noida and were the third tallest structures in the world to be demolished thus.
In January 2020, 55-metre-tall illegally built towers—Holy Faith H2O and the twin towers of Alfa Serene—abutting the backwaters in Kochi’s Maradu were destroyed in a controlled implosion. Both the Kochi and Noida towers were demolished by the Mumbai-based Edifice Engineering.
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