When fear has a towering presence: Chintels Paradiso crash exposes safety lapses in Gurugram’s high-rise buildings

Geetanjali Gayatri

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FEAR has a new address in Gurugram — the high-rises that dot the millennium city’s skyline. It is, however, more palpable at Chintels Paradiso, where the trauma of the roof collapse in the luxurious, gated, 18-floor residential society is etched indelibly in the minds of those who lived the horror.

This incident has highlighted the need for checking structural stability at different stages of construction. To ensure safety in future, detailed standard operating procedures are being finalised. K Markand Pandurang, Director, Town and Country Planning

On the evening of February 10, just past 6 pm, it triggered a fear spiral across all high-rises as five floors of a tower came crashing down. In a matter of seconds, there was no floor beneath and no ceiling overhead. Only a gaping hole, a void where life once thrived.

While two lives were lost, faith stood shaken, consumed by the cloud of dust that wrapped the society as the floors crumbled. The impact was so huge that cracks appeared in the adjoining towers.

“My wife called me up to say there was an announcement asking them to leave the building with instructions to use the stairs instead of the lift. I thought some minor accident must have taken place. I reached 10 minutes later and realised the gravity of the situation,” recalls 46-year-old property dealer Sanjay Bansal. He has a flat in the same D tower that fell.

“It sounded like a gravel truck was unloading. After that, there was only dust all around, panic and people screaming,” recalls SK Singh, a government school principal who lived on the 16th floor of the same tower.

The residents are sleepless since that horrific evening and the smallest sound makes them edgy. Though the occupants of the affected tower, 45 families in all, have been moved to vacant flats in the society and still others have moved out to “safer” places, the dust is yet to settle.

“It has been 15 days, and I have not gone to office. For three days straight, we did not sleep at all,” says Bhupinder Bhardwaj, a stock broker living on the 17th floor with his wife and two children.

Amidst the fear lurks seething rage of feeling “duped and cheated”. Living on the 18th floor, RK Rana says, “We were the 32nd occupants and paid more than Rs1.5 crore for this flat when we moved in four years back. There were addtional charges for parking and the club. Before the mishap, a flat here cost anywhere between Rs2.5 crore and Rs4 crore, depending on the size. We invested every bit we had to get cleaner air and better facilities, little realising we were risking our lives even more. Obviously, the quality was compromised despite such huge payments and charges.”

The licence for the 12.5-acre complex was given in 2007-2008, and the Occupation Certificate (OC) for tower D in 2016 since the project came up in phases.

The “fall” has also brought the prices of the flats crashing down, with nobody willing to buy property in this complex, and sending alarm bells ringing across other societies. Apprehensive flat-owners and resident welfare associations no longer wish to leave anything to chance; they want their issues redressed on priority, besides asking the builders to pay for non-delivery of services and poor construction.

Gurugram has close to 350 high-rises and nearly 55 of them have lined up for a structural audit offered by the administration, while flagging their concerns about plaster peeling off, use of poor quality material and waterlogging, among others.

While Haryana’s Town and Country Planning Department is gearing up to put stern checks in place by carrying out a structural audit of new buildings to determine seismic and other clearances (so far left to the real estate developer), it will carry out an audit of the occupied buildings where residents have underlined their concerns, over the next three months.

Brisk Lumbini resident Gaurav Prakash says the Chintels episode was no surprise. “They had raised some issues nearly nine months back. We have been pursuing our case of the builder abandoning us as the plaster in the balconies is peeling off, the iron rods are eroding after being exposed to the vagaries of the weather and seepage is at its worst. We want an audit to know what risk we are living with and how big it is. We have the Chintels example before us and an NBCC building where occupants are being evicted. Two episodes in one month have all of us worried about our fate,” Prakash explains, adding that the District Town Planner (Enforcement), RS Batth, paid a visit and assured immediate audit.

Atharva’s Anjan Deweshwar insists that their society is worse off as compared to Chintels. “We face such accidents everyday. The foundation is weakening due to water seepage since there is no sewerage connection in our society, the pillars have cracks and 20-kg plaster falls off anywhere. The walls cannot stand the kitchen cabinets and our homes are falling apart. We have given several representations and are hoping the administration will act before it is too late,” he says.

The local administration has already served eviction notices on 40 residents of the NBCC Green View society and given a deadline to vacate their homes by March 1. The residents maintain that their flats are no longer “liveable”, but they are being shunted out of their homes without a definite rehabilitation and refund plan. The department has already ordered an audit of five societies — Raheja Vedanta and Atharwa, Brisk Lumbini, M3M and Mahindra Aura — and this number is gradually set to grow.

The builders, residents believe, will have to fall in line and deliver on their promises, or face action.

What the audit will look at

The Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority, Gurugram, has prepared draft regulations for structural audit of existing buildings. These regulations, once approved, will make it mandatory to check the “well-being” of the building at different stages of construction and post-construction.

How licence is given

• The Haryana Town and Country Planning Department gives approval for the plan and, once the building is complete, it issues an Occupation Certificate.
• To obtain it, the developer is required to submit two certificates.
• The first is from a structural engineer, who certifies that the building has been constructed under his supervision in keeping with norms of the National Building Code and the Haryana building code, and it is constructed keeping the seismic zone and other natural calamities in mind.
• The second certificate is from a proof consultant, who certifies the approval given by the structural engineer.