No slum rehabilitation policy yet

With each political party playing politics over the recent demolition drive in Shakur Basti, the AAP government is yet to come out with any concrete relocation policy for slum-dwellers in the national capital. The AAP government, which has been in power for about eight months now, has not finalised proposed Delhi Slum Rehabilitation and JJ Relocation policy.

The proposed draft, on which a final decision is yet to be taken, states that the land-owning agency will have to first put up the proposal for demolition before the DUSIB. If the DUSIB is satisfied with the proposal and permits demolition, then only will it make all the efforts to relocate the slums after clearing the land and then hand it over to the land-owning agency within six months.

According to the draft, “The land-owning agency shall pay such amount to the DUSIB in advance, which meets the cost of construction of alternate dwelling units, cost of the land at circle rate on which those dwelling units are constructed and cost of relocation.”

But the draft policy says that the beneficiary contribution as well as the contribution made by the Union government, if any, towards the cost of construction of dwelling units, will be deducted from the aforementioned cost of rehabilitation.

Even the Rajiv Ratan Awas Yojna for urban poor had already been scrapped by the Kejriwal government without bringing in any new policy. Estimates show that 17,000 flats for economical weaker section in urban areas are vacant for the last five years and the successive governments, including the previous Dikshit administration, had failed to allocate these units.

A highly-placed source said that the decision to demolish slum cluster at Shakur Basti was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by railway officials and attended among others by the district magistrate, sub-divisional magistrate, the Delhi police, the DDA and other senior officials of the Delhi government. The officials had reportedly discussed at length about the police force which was to be deployed during the demolition drive.

According to DUSIB, there are about 675 slum clusters in Delhi. While the political parties are playing politics over the relocation of those dwellers whose units have been raised, there is no clear cut policy in place through which such an exercise can be carried out in the city. A local Congress leader said : “Even the AAP government has been making a hue and cry for rehabilitation of the slum dwellers, and it itself has not come out with any definite policy to implement the same in the national Capital.”