Supertech case: SIT team visits Noida Authority office

“The committee has been set up to go into the facts and recommend to the government who all are involved in it and what were the irregularities etc. We have to study the documents, the orders of the High Court and the Supreme Court,”  Sanjiv Mittal, Uttar Pradesh Infrastructure and industrial development commissioner heading the SIT, had told Moneycontrol on September 4.

The team has been tasked to investigate all officials who had approved the building map of the 40-storey towers in violation of the building norms, the entire approval process which includes examining the role of officers on special duty, ACEOs and other senior officials.

According to reports, a committee had been set up by the Noida Authority to approve building plans between 2005 and 2012, the time around which the maps of the twin towers was approved. This committee had members from the engineering and the planning department. The committee had been set up by the then CEO. The seven officials, five of whom are retired, who have been named in Noida Authority’s internal probe were all part of this committee, reports have said.

Amended plans for the twin towers wherein the height of the towers was allowed to be doubled were all approved around this time. The developer was allotted the land for the Emerald Court project in 2004 and revised maps were sanctioned in December 2006, November 2009 and March 2012.
The Supreme Court, on August 31, ordered that the two towers in Noida be demolished within three months.

Within hours of the Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath directing on September 1 that inquiry be conducted and stringent action taken against the guilty officials involved in allowing wrongdoings in the construction of the 40-storey twin towers in Noida, an official with the Noida Authority’s planning department was suspended and a former chief architect planner who took voluntary retirement from the Authority is under the scanner, sources said.

The Uttar Pradesh government has suspended a manager in the planning department of the Noida Authority in connection with the construction of two multi-storey towers that had come up in violation of building bye-laws, sources said on September 2.

Mukesh Goyal, manager in the planning department, was nominated to attend the Supreme Court hearings in the Emerald Court case. He regularly attended the court hearings but did not bring case updates and important facts to the notice of senior officers of the Noida Authority, sources had said.

The planning manager has prima facie been found guilty of irregularities and irresponsibility in work. A departmental inquiry has already been initiated against him and he has been placed under immediate suspension with effect from September 1, the sources said.

Around half a dozen other Noida Authority officials are also under scrutiny for their alleged role in the case, they added.

Earlier, Noida Authority had set up a two-member committee to probe the irregularities that took place between 2004 and 2012. The investigation will be completed in about a week’s time. It is being conducted by a two-member team of additional chief executive officers (ACEOs) Praveen Mishra and Neha Sharma.

“Yes, a committee has been set up to enquire the role of officials and will submit its report within 10 days’ time,” Neha Sharma, ACEO, Noida Authority had confirmed to Moneycontrol last week.

“In the preliminary findings, names of eight to nine people have been sent to the government. Action will be taken at the state government’s level,” the official said.

The task laid out for the two-member committee is to determine if the original 15 buildings of the Emerald Court project located in Noida Sector 93A and the twin towers were part of a single layout or two separate projects when further sanctions of the building plans were approved way back in 2005. The developer Supertech was allotted land for the project way back in November 2004.

The committee is also looking at the aspect of height approvals. It was in October 2011 that the planned height of the buildings increased from 66 metres to 121 metres through purchasable floor area ratio (FAR).