An eerie silence prevails in the Motinagar area of the state capital on Monday, a day after the district administration carried out the demolition of over a hundred shops in the locality.
Debris and rubble lie strewn in the streets as shopkeepers and residents, though heartbroken at the prospect of losing their homes and businesses, speak to the media only on the condition of anonymity.
Worried residents here say that the government has ordered them to vacate the area within two months. This period has been granted due to the children's board exams.
The head of a five-member family, Bablu Qureshi, has been carrying out his ancestral welding business in the area for 40 years. His house is in the settlement.
“We have been made unemployed and orphaned. I have three children—how will I feed them?" questions Qureshi.
"The government has given us two months before demolishing our homes too, considering the children's exams. But tell me, if the father has no income, how will the children eat?" He stresses his point.
Sitting on the debris near the barricades, Saeed Khan says, “My brother-in-law passed away years ago, and since then, my nephew has been running a shop from a very young age. He is not well-educated enough to secure a respectable job. Now, he is back on the streets.”
A man who has run a pan shop for 20 years laments, “My entire earnings are gone in a single day. Now, I will have to start everything from scratch.”
Puncture repair shop owner, Abdul Rahman, questions, “What can we do now? The administration wants it this way, so we must figure something out to feed our children."
An elderly resident of the settlement, Siddiq, recalls, “Shivraj Singh Chouhan had said that people would remain where they were. We do not have the strength to fight." Owner of a service station and furniture shops, Mohammad Haroon, argues, “Residents should have been given some time to find an alternative source of livelihood or a place to relocate our shops.”
Though the administration has said that 110 shops were demolished in the action, residents claim that 120 establishments were turned to rubble, where their livelihoods now lie buried.
A shop owner, speaking anonymously, says, “On one hand, we are motivated to become self-reliant, and on the other, we face such actions."
Standing near the barricades, Ikhlaq comments, “I can't understand the benefit of removing these shops, but one thing is certain—every family whose shop was demolished, including shop workers and owners, is now unemployed."
Though demolished in under a day, the lives destroyed by the demolition will now take decades to rebuild. Having developed several decades ago, the neighbourhood is situated on government land, which the administration has sought to reclaim for infrastructure projects.