Bringing Down Supertech Twin Towers: After 9-Year Fight, A Matter Of 9 Seconds

Residents had moved court in 2012 as Supertech sought to add super-tall towers to existing society; the final court verdict came last year

Nearly 10 years after area residents first went to court against Supertech's twin towers in Noida's Sector 93A, it will take less than 10 seconds to demolish them this Sunday. Trivia says the towers are taller than the Qutub Minar, but for the residents of Emerald Court, the structure was a monstrosity.

The residents told the court that the towers — 100 metres tall with 40 floors each — are coming up in a green space that was promised when they bought their houses in the society. More serious violations of norms were found too.

The builder planned to have 900 flats, more than two-thirds of which he'd sold by the time the Supreme Court stamped the demolition order last August. Demolish the towers in three months, said the court; but technical difficulties — safety of adjacent apartment buildings mainly — kept delaying it.

Finally, the Noida authorities and Supertech contracted a company called Edifice Engineering. It has had success in similar projects abroad. Some of the floors were, meanwhile, demolished with manual labour, to make the eventual blast-and-fall relatively less intense.