The district administration last month declared the society “unsafe” and asked 140 families to vacate by March 1. Express Spread over 18.03 acres in Gurgaon’s Sector 37D, NBCC Green View, a residential complex of the National Buildings Construction Corporation (India) Limited, a Government of India Navratna enterprise, has been marred by issues almost since its inception.
It was after a joint meeting with society residents and NBCC officials last month that the district administration declared the society “unsafe” and asked 140 residing families to vacate by March 1. Months earlier, in October 2021, experts from IIT-Delhi hired for a structural assessment had said that “a visual inspection of the buildings in the project indicated continued deterioration in structures at an accelerated pace and recommended that the buildings be evacuated within two months in the interest of safety of residents”.
What also appears to have forced the administration’s hand is a collapse at a tower in Chintels Paradiso at Sector 109 on February 10, which left two dead.
For the NBCC project, though, trouble started much earlier.
Documents accessed by The Indian Express show that construction began in 2012 after a contract was awarded to M/s Supreme Infrastructure India Ltd, with stipulated date of July 14, 2014, for completion. But with the contractor executing only 39% of the work, the contract was terminated on October 16, 2014. In January 2015, NBCC contracted M/S Rama Civil India Construction Pvt Ltd for the rest of the work with a stipulated completion date of April 2, 2016. The work was completed in July 2017 with a total of 784 dwelling units.
Not long after taking possession, residents started raising complaints of poor workmanship and sub-standard construction, alleging that large cracks had developed in the outer surface of the buildings.
G S Mohanty, President, Association of Apartment Owners, NBCC Green View Group Housing Project, Sector 37-D, said that as soon as residents moved in by early 2018, they noticed cracks on the exterior and interior of the buildings and reported it to NBCC site officials.
According to an NBCC official, in the interest of safety of residents, they involved experts from IIT-Delhi to investigate the structural soundness after concerns over concrete falling out in some buildings: “For a Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) report also, the government machinery sprung into action and got it investigated.”
An intensive examination report of the Technical Examiner of the CVC , conducted towards the end of 2019, flagged issues related to inefficiencies in allotment of the contract for the project.
“This has resulted in… selection of agencies having less experience than actually required for execution of actual balance work,” the report said.
The report further said that while opening the bids for the work that was pending, the eligibility criterion for selecting contractors was ignored.
It also mentioned that there was no control/monitoring of the quantity of cement and quality of concrete actually used in work, and instances of poor planning and structural design.
“It is evident from these photographs that the quality of work is very poor, cracks developed in the structural members, and reinforcement steel is exposed and rusted. Some of the slab panels fell down and (were) re-cast. During site inspection, cracks in beam, columns and slabs at several places were observed, plaster is peeling out… The overall quality of the work is very poor and the structural soundness is doubtful,” the report added.
P K Bhandari, who was among the people who had conducted the inspection for the said CVC report, said, “We had compiled the report and sent it to the commission for requisite action.”
More than a year after the CVC report, in February 2021, the two contractors, M/s Rama Civil India Construction Pvt Ltd and M/S Supreme Infrastructure India Ltd, were blacklisted by NBCC (India) Ltd for a period of two years.
A senior NBCC official said, “The project works were investigated by experts from IIT-Delhi and it was found that the concrete structures of the buildings have high chloride percentage beyond permissible limits. High chloride percentage tends to corrode the reinforcements at an accelerated pace. Hence, the concrete started falling. NBCC had started to repair it and while the process was on, IIT-Delhi suggested in October 2021 that the society should be vacated.”
P K Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director of NBCC (India) Ltd, could not be reached for comment.
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