With each political party playing politics over the recent demolition drive carried out by the Railways in Shakur Basti, the AAP Government is yet to come out with any concrete relocation policy for slum dwellers in the national Capital.
While the AAP Government has been in power for about eight months, its proposed Delhi Slum Rehabilitation and JJ Relocation policy is still on the paper. Even the 17,000 flats constructed under Rajiv Ratan Awas Yojna for urban poor is still lying vacant as these flats have not been allocated to urban poor under rehabilitation of the slum dwellers.
Successive Governments, including that of the erstwhile Sheila Dikshit, had failed to allocate the houses to the poor, falling vacant for the last five years.
According to the proposed draft, the land owning agency will have to put up the proposal before the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB). If the DUSIB is satisfied with the proposal and permits demolition, then only it will make all the efforts to relocate the jhuggis after clearing the land and hand over the same to the land owning agency within six months.
The draft said, “The land owning agency shall pay such amount to 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. However, the beneficiary contribution as well as the contribution made by the Government of India, if any, towards the cost of construction of dwelling units, will be deducted from the aforementioned cost of rehabilitation.”
The DUSIB said there are about 675 slum clusters in Delhi. 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 policy.”
Officials said 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, DDA and other senior officials of the Delhi Government.
The officials also discussed at length about the police force which was to be deployed during the demolition drive.