UP 2022: The demolition of Supertech's two 100-metre tall towers was a modern-day engineering spectacle that trumped every other news in Noida in 2022, a year also marked by viral video clips of conflicts in housing societies and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath breaking a jinx.
Emerging from the shadows of the second and third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, lakhs of Gautam Buddh Nagar residents took part in the assembly elections to the three seats of Noida, Dadri and Jewar in February.
The results were announced in March, with BJP's Pankaj Singh, Tejpal Nagar and Dhirendra Singh successfully retaining the three seats, respectively. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath also broke the three-decade-old "Noida jinx" as he stormed to power for a second time in a row.
Since Veerendra Bahadur Singh's ouster as chief minister in 1988 after a trip here, a superstition was nurtured that any chief minister visiting Noida would be out of power.
Earlier, chief ministers Kalyan Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Rajnath Singh avoided trips to Noida during their tenures. However, Mayawati, who visited Noida as chief minister, lost to akhilesh Yadav in the 2012 assembly polls.
Though Yadav avoided visiting Noida during his tenure, he lost to Adityanath in 2017. Adityanath visited Noida around a dozen times and culminated his 2022 assembly poll campaign for first phase in Jewar here, breaking the so-called jinx.
The year also Noida' first police commissioner, Alok Singh, being transferred after a nearly three-year-long stint. Senior IPS officer Laxmi Singh was appointed to the post on November 29. In the first half of 2022, authorities in Noida remained busy preparing for the ultimate showdown – the demolition of Supertech's twin towers in Sector 93 A on August 28.
Twin-tower demolition
The demolition was ordered by the Supreme Court on August 31, 2021, after it held that they were built in violation of building bye-laws. The Apex and Ceyane towers, both nearly 100-metre-tall, were razed to the ground in just nine seconds in a carefully choreographed demolition by Mumbai's Edifice Engineering with its South Africa partner Jet Demolitions.
The eye-popping demolition took three to four tonnes of explosives filled in over 9,600 holes drilled in the skeletal structures of the two towers that had come up on Emerald Court society premises illegally and blocked sunlight, air ventilation for adjoining residents. Social and mainstream media was inundated with videos of the demolition, that left behind a cloud of dust and tonnes of rubble.
Conflicts in housing societies in Noida
In a city often dubbed as a "concrete jungle", two residents of the Grand Omaxe society in Sector 93B on August 5 got into a quarrel over the plantation of exotic palm plants.
While a woman opposed the plantation in the common area, a little-known politician insisted on it and hurled expletives at her.
Shortly after the conflict, a video clip surfaced on social media and went viral. Within hours the politician, Shrikant Tyagi, was in the dock for his actions.
What followed was police action and Tyagi, who claimed allegiance to the BJP, went into hiding for four days. He was arrested on August 9 and slapped with charges such as assault and cheating as well as booked under the Gangsters Act. The BJP, however, maintained that Tyagi was not associated with the party.
Senior BJP leader and Gautam Buddh Nagar MP Mahesh Sharma was also seen wading into the controversy with his visit to the society, demanding strict action against Tyagi. The leader's entry into the episode did not go down well with the Tyagi community, considered an influential votebank in western Uttar Pradesh and traditional supporter of the BJP.
Almost two months later, Tyagi walked out of jail, with the court quashing most of the serious charges against him, including those under the Gangsters Act. The year was also peppered with disputes, including human-animal conflict, in some housing societies.
Some of video clips that went viral and prompted police action included a drunk woman lawyer assaulting and hurling casteist slurs at a private guard at Jaypee Wishtown, a Greater Noida man assaulting an armed security guard in Gaur City mall, a Palm Olympia resident being assaulted near his home and two factions clashing at Hyde Park in Noida over society elections.
Policies on stray dogs
In October, a seven-month-old child of a daily wage earning couple was mauled to death by a stray dog inside Lotus Boulevard society in Noida, while cases of canines biting children and adults were reported throughout the year, prompting local authorities to come up with dog policies.
Alarmed by the situation, the Noida Authority as well as the Greater Noida Authority by year-end brought policies for feeding stray dogs and made registration of pet dogs mandatory.
On the environment front, this year turned out better than 2021 in terms of air quality for Noida, Greater Noida, according to an official. The pollution control board recommended imposition of fines to the tune of Rs 1.40 crore in various cases of violation of norms in 2022, the official said.
Noida International Airport
The construction of the Noida International Airport, whose foundation was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, continued in full-swing in 2022. The first phase of the Greenfield project is expected to be completed by September 2024.
"We are on schedule to deliver the project as per the terms and conditions of the concession agreement," Christoph Schnellmann, the CEO of Yamuna International Airport Private Limited, which is developing the airport, said in November.
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