Authorities started evacuating thousands of people from their homes on Saturday ahead of the demolition of two 40-storey skyscrapers in a residential area in Noida, officials and local media said.

The twin 103-metre-tall apartment blocks of Supertech are due to be imploded through the waterfall technique on Sunday in an operation lasting between 12 and 15 seconds — becoming the largest structures ever demolished in the country, according to local authorities.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the builders of the two towers had violated a series of critical construction rules, ordering the buildings to be razed to the ground.

More than 3,700kg of explosives will be used to demolish the buildings, known as Apex and Ceyane, which are located on the edge of a busy highway that links Uttar Pradesh to New Delhi.

The towers, taller than the Qutub Minar, were covered with white plastic sheets as police gathered around the area and sealed off arterial roads in preparation for the operation, local television images showed.

“All arrangements have been made and preparations done for the safe demolition of the twin towers as per schedule at 2.30pm tomorrow,” Noida Authority CEO Ritu Maheshwari said.

Around 5,000 residents of Emerald Court and adjoining ATS Village societies in Sector 93A have to vacate their premises by 7am on Sunday while also removing nearly 3,000 vehicles and taking away 150-200 pets, including cats and dogs, with them for the day.

While the nearby Noida-Greater Noida Expressway will be closed from 2.15pm to 2.45pm, the city will remain a no-fly zone for drones. The air space in a one-nautical-mile radius above the blast will also remain briefly unavailable for flights during the demolition.

Mayur Mehta, project manager of Edifice Engineering that has been entrusted with pulling down the buildings, said only six people — three foreign experts, Indian blaster Chetan Dutta, a police officer and himself — would remain within the exclusion zone to push the button for the blast.