‘You will get justice’: Delhi CM meets slum dwellers, assures of rehabilitation

Underscoring that her government has allocated ₹700 crore in the Delhi budget for the redevelopment of slum clusters, Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Sunday urged slum dwellers not to panic as they will be rehabilitated if evicted for development projects.

“When a crisis came upon you, I came to meet you because the Delhi government is not in favour of removing slums without any reason,” Ms. Gupta told slum dwellers while visiting a cluster near a railway crossing in her Assembly constituency, Shalimar Bagh in north Delhi.

The CM said the Railways has issued a notice for the slum’s demolition as it is on railway land.

“The Railways is expanding the Azadpur railway station,” Ms. Gupta said and assured the slum dwellers that her government would approach the Railway Ministry for rehabilitation. “You will get justice,” she said.

The CM claimed that a survey of the slum was conducted in 2020, but the then Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government neither decided “to halt it nor approached the Railways”. 

Opposition parties  have been accusing the BJP government in Delhi of backtracking on its poll promise of ‘Jahan Jhuggi Wahan Makaan (A home where the slum stands)’, and carrying out demolition drives in slum clusters in various parts of the city “without proper rehabilitation”.

“During the term in office of the Opposition parties, slum dwellers were just seen as a vote bank and the availability of alcohol in these areas was encouraged. Now that our government is working on development schemes for slum dwellers, these leaders are trying to incite unrest and mislead them,” Ms. Gupta alleged.

In response, AAP requested the CM to publish the list of slums that have been demolished and the names of people who have been allotted flats.

“They [Ministers] are trying to fool the people by giving flats to just a few of them and making others homeless,” the party said.

‘Insensitivity to poor’

Meanwhile, Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Sunday alleged that hundreds of slum dwellers are being rendered homeless in demolition drives by the Delhi government. He said this exposes the BJP’s “insensitivity” to the poor and the “arrogance of power”.

In a rebuttal, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said, “Rahul Gandhi should tell what the Congress did in 60 years to give a better life to the urban poor.”