eviction

आधारभूत सुविधाओं को लागू करने वाले अधिकारों में, जैसे आवास का अधिकार के अभाव में मलिन बस्तियों में रहने वाले और अन्य असंगठित बस्तियों में रहने वाले लोगों ने पिछले कुछ वर्षों में ख़ुद को संगठित किया और अदालतों द्वारा और राजनैतिक वक़ालत दोनों का उपयोग करके ख़ुद को बेदख़ली से बचाने की कोशिश की है।इसके परिणामस्वरूप इन समुदायों के लिए कम से कम कुछ प्रक्रियात्मक सुरक्षा उपायों (और सीमित मौलिक अधिकार) का विस्तार करते हुए, संवैधानिक प्रावधानों और अंतरराष्ट्रीय कानून के तहत भारत की प्रतिबद्धताओं पर निर्भर निर्णयों, नीतियों और कुछ कानूनों की एक श्रृंखला तैयार की गई है। यह राष्ट्रीय राजधानी क्षेत्र दिल्ली में इन प्रक्रियाओं और प्रावधानों का संक्षिप्त दस्तावेजीकरण करता है।

The making of the city of Delhi is characterised by perennial eviction at the legal and spatial peripheries of its urban landscape. Disturbingly, this character of regular eviction was not disturbed even during the time of the COVID–19  pandemic, when the world was facing a state of exception.

In keeping with its mandate to improve the quality of life of residents of JJ clusters, DUSIB constructed an Economically Weaker Section (EWS) Housing Society in Baprola Phase 2, approximately 25km from central Delhi. However, in less than five years from completion and relocation of allottees, issues of seepage, cracks in walls, peeling of bricks, overflowing drains have been reported by residents, including to DUSIB. The emergence and wide prevalence of these issues in such a short duration necessitated the need for a comprehensive assessment of the design, construction quality, and grievance redressal mechanism in this context.

Close to 900 families live in the ordered stacks of four-storeyed flats in Baprola in west Delhi. After being evicted from their informal bastis within the city, they were herded and resettled into these low-rise flats, each with barely enough space to house the families of four to five members. Pushed far from their places of work, with peeling plastered walls and water shortages, the residents lament about their state of residence, their grievances unheard and unseen, all but forgotten in the peripheries of the city.

Last week in the area of Jahangirpuri in Delhi, residents watched as bulldozers arrived early in the morning, and started hastily demolishing shops and homes. Videos of the bulldozers in the area surfaced online, showing a large crowd gathered, and residents imploring the authorities to spare their homes. One of many resettlement colonies formed in […]

In the absence of an enforceable substantive right to housing, communities living in slums and other informal settlements have mobilized over the years, using both courts and political advocacy to try and protect themselves from eviction. This has resulted in a series of judgments, policies, and some legislation, relying on Constitutional provisions and India’s commitments under international law, extending at least some procedural safeguards (and limited substantive rights) to these communities. This brief documents these processes and provisions in the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

The poor in India’s cities have endured evictions and demolitions of their homes and settlements for decades now. While long legal and political battles have sometimes resulted in a modicum of justice through rehabilitation of affected households, demolitions themselves are irreversible acts that forever destroy a settlement and transform the area. initiatives like the Missing Basti Project (MBP) seek to document these erasures by utilising the power of the Internet to create an archive of material memory.

On June 7, Supreme Court reiterated its order of February and April 2020 to evict the Khori Gaon basti on the Delhi-Haryana border, falling within the Faridabad Municipal Corporation (FMC) jurisdiction. The Court concluded that this basti is an encroachment on the Aravalli forest land and so deemed it fit to order the municipal corporation to undertake evictions using force if needed. The residents have been given a few days to collect their belongings and leave before the demolition squad comes to vacate these lands. The demolitions of over 6,500 homes are scheduled to take place just when the monsoon arrives and we are still in a pandemic where most of the population is not vaccinated. This is great injustice to bring upon anyone during a pandemic. The urgency shown in demolishing the houses of the poor is therefore unjustified.

An initiative to archive past and ongoing evictions in Delhi to question as well as mobilize action for the prevention of further evictions.

The Supreme Court of India on 31.08.2020 passed an order, in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) relating to pollution and waste management in Delhi, directing the eviction of “encroachments” – primarily jhuggi-jhopri (JJ) bastis, or slums – on Railway land in the capital. Coming in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the order has been subject to legal criticism and has received wide coverage in the media. In this series of Q&A, we deconstruct what exactly the order says, the extent of the displacement it is likely to cause, the legally prescribed procedure for eviction and relocation, and what would be a fair approach going forward.