Tower in Gurgaon's Chintels Paradiso that killed two in February to be demolished: Officials

Two women were killed after the dining room floor of a sixth-floor apartment at Chintels Paradiso in Sector 109 came down on February 10. (Image: PTI)

Almost nine months after a portion of a sixth-floor apartment in a building collapsed all the way to the first floor at Gurgaon’s Chintels Paradiso society in Sector 109 and killed two women, the Gurgaon deputy commissioner (DC) on November 5 said that tower D, which has over 50 flats, will be demolished. This will be done according to the recommendations of a report by experts from IIT Delhi, which was probing the collapse and had found structural deficiencies ‘beyond repair.’

After two women were killed when one of the apartment blocks in Chintels Paradiso in Gurugram’s Sector 109 collapsed, 36 families were made to live in alternative accommodation in the housing complex. Families from other towers also have been residing in alternative accommodation. The process of structural audit is also going on in Tower 'E' and 'F' of the same society that has a total of nine towers. The report of the audit will be out in a month.

The 18-floor D tower has 50 flats.

Gurugram Deputy Commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav said that the IIT team has found structural deficiencies in the construction of the tower, whose repair is not possible on technical and economic grounds. "Therefore, the entire Tower D of Chintels Paradiso society should be demolished," Yadav said.

Yadav said the builder will be instructed to initiate the demolition process. "Instructions will also be given to the developer to settle claims of home allottees of the tower in a time-bound manner".

The deputy commissioner is expected to fix the date of demolition on Monday.

The report has found that the repair work (retrofitting) was unmonitored and unsupervised. The committee’s findings are that steel corroded reinforcements had been painted from the top to hide corrosion. The methodology of repair was also not as per the requisite standard.

The sampling of D tower has found it had high chloride content and the quality of concrete is poor, due to which it is not habitable. The report stated that the quality was so poor that it was not technically and economically feasible to repair it. The report has recommended that Tower D should be permanently closed and the process to initiate its demolition should be initiated, Yadav said.

The IIT report also recommended that towers E and F should also be immediately vacated until testing process of the two towers is completed. “The report of these two towers is expected soon,” he said.

Yadav  said that the builder will be directed to settle the claims of buyers in a timebound manner. "They can arrive at a mutual settlement, or the builder can buy back the unit or provide them another unit of a similar value elsewhere. They can send in writing that they have agreed on the same. If they are unable to reach an agreement, then we had identified two independent evaluators, those evaluators have submitted a report on the current market price of the flats in Tower D. Also, flat owners who had got additional/interior work done within their flats, even that cost has been inbuilt into the cost of the apartment," he said.

"If some buyers are unable to arrive at an agreement then we will fall back on the report submitted by the evaluators to decide on the market value of the unit and settle the matter," he said.

Manoj Singh, who moved into the complex in 2018, told Moneycontrol that he chose the project because it was around 6 km from his workplace. He continues to live on rent today.

“We will take action after we have gone through the order. Builder has been asked to negotiate with the buyers and come to a consensus,” he said, adding that the valuation of the flat has to be as per market rate and not at the same price we bought the unit almost a decade ago.

In a statement, Chintels Paradiso said, "Ever since the unfortunate incident, we have been cooperating with the authorities and also with the affected residents in every possible way and will continue to do so".

The incident had prompted the authorities to conduct a structural audit of several high-rise buildings in the city.