The Delhi High Court has given its final word on the fate of the notorious Signature View Apartments in Mukherjee Nagar—demolition is inevitable.
Built by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) as a showpiece for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the 12 towers with 336 flats were once meant to house players and officials. But years later, they’ve become a cautionary tale in concrete. Residents who bought these homes soon found themselves living amid cracked walls, peeling plaster, rusting steel, and the constant fear of collapse.
A string of technical reports confirmed what the eye could already see. The National Council for Cement and Building Materials sounded alarms in 2015 and 2019, and IIT Delhi’s Prof. Shashank Bishnoi delivered the harshest verdict in 2022: the buildings were beyond saving, dangerous to inhabit, and needed to be dismantled without delay.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi acted on those findings in December 2023, issuing an evacuation and demolition order under the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act. One resident, Man Mohan Singh Attri, tried to fight it—first through a writ petition, then a review plea, and finally an intra-court appeal.
On Wednesday, a Division Bench led by Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela refused to intervene. They held that the authorities had acted on “tangible and relevant material,” leaving no scope for judicial second-guessing.
The court’s dismissal of the appeal seals the fate of the once-celebrated towers, now remembered less as a Commonwealth Games legacy and more as a crumbling monument to poor construction.
