GURUGRAM: The department of town and country planning (DTCP), with the support of police, has started erecting barricades around the five towers declared unsafe for habitation in Sector 109’s Chintels Paradiso. This comes amid opposition from flat owners, who are saying the developer should first complete the process of compensating them.
Towers D, E, F, G and H were vacated after structural audits by IIT Delhi found them to be unsafe following a vertical cave-in at tower D two years ago.
On Saturday evening, around 20 police personnel arrived from Bajghera police station to start barricading the towers. During the exercise, the SHO said an FIR will be filed against any resident who tries to obstruct the barricading work. “Strict instructions have been given by the district administration regarding barricading,” a DTCP official said.
Pillars have been erected around the pillars, a spokesperson for the developer said on Monday. “Now, the installation of metal sheets is left. Work on this will begin on Tuesday,” he said.
For the past several months, the district administration and district town planner have been continuously writing letters to the builder for barricades, citing safety threats after these towers were declared unsafe by IIT Delhi.
Chintels India, the developer of the project, had written to deputy commissioner Nishant Yadav seeking the administration’s support and security arrangements to vacate these towers and barricade unsafe common areas. People are often seen roaming around these towers and the administration has repeatedly issued instructions for barricading. When the builder tried to erect barricades, residents protested against it, officials said.
Flat owners said the compensation settlement should be completed first, only after which other work should be done. “Written instructions should be taken from the administration for barricading. Only after that should such work start. We also want speedy settlement of compensation,” a resident said.
Meanwhile, tower D — in which five flats collapsed vertically on February 10, 2022, killing two residents — is in bad shape, with balconies collapsing on their own. In the last two months, balconies of flats located on different floors have collapsed thrice. While no injuries were reported, there was a possibility of accidents as no barricades had been set up.
Edifice Engineering, the company that razed Supertech’s twin towers in Noida, recently suggested immediate remedial action at Paradiso till the doomed towers are demolished. It submitted a report on November 25 last year after conducting a physical verification on each floor and apartment in the towers declared unsafe.
“Unsafe areas should be immediately barricaded to avoid any untoward incidents. Tanks on the terraces of all towers should be emptied of water immediately to reduce load on the main columns of the towers and avoid collapse risk. Electricity supply to all the five towers also should be immediately disconnected to avoid havoc created by fire due to falling of internal parts of the towers. Non-tower areas are filled with soil for landscaping, which is adding additional load on the podium slab and may lead to its collapse,” Edifice had stated in its report.
