Noida authority directs structural audit of seven buildings next to Supertech twin towers

NOIDA: The Noida Authority has asked Supertech to carry out a structural audit of residential buildings around the Emerald Court twin towers, which will be demolished in August.

This audit, Noida officials clarified, will be an additional exercise, separate from the one by Edifice – the company bringing the towers down – to record all pre-demolition structural defects in residential buildings within 50 metres of the twin towers in Sector 93A.

According to Noida officials, there are three towers of Emerald Court and four towers of ATS Greens Village within the 50-metre radius of Apex and Ceyane. In case any defects come to light during the structural audit, officials said Supertech will have to get repairs and retrofitting done before the demolition, scheduled to take place on August 21.

Supertech, however, said it had received no such directive. Supertech MD RK Arora said, “I have not received any order from the Noida Authority so far regarding the structural audit. At present, all documents and letters go to the interim resolution professional’s office first. In case we receive any such order, we will look into it and decide our next course of action.”

The IRP was appointed by the bankruptcy court, NCLT, into some Supertech projects that are under the group company against which a petition was filed over dues.

A senior Noida Authority official said the move asking for a structural audit was in tandem with the Supreme court’s order that the developer had to carry out these tasks and bear their costs. Once submitted, the audit report will be vetted by the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI). The demolition of the twin towers was ordered by the Supreme Court, which ruled they had been built illegally, last August.

Edifice will submit its findings to the CBRI by June 30. Uttkarsh Mehta, partner at Edifice, said, “We have done videography and photography of all cracks and structural defects in buildings in order to compare them once the final demolition is done.”

Residents of Emerald Court buildings in the immediate vicinity of the twin towers and ATS Greens Village said they had already expressed concern about the exercise and the safety of their homes and were waiting for an audit to be carried out.

Notably, a recent structural study of basements at Emerald Court buildings done by a private firm hired by the society’s RWA had endorsed residents’ concerns about the poor state of the structures on which their buildings stand and sought immediate strengthening and retrofitting of some basement columns.