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‘Need to relocate evicted slum-dwellers’ by Utkarsh Anand

Upholding the right to shelter as a fundamental right for all residents of the Capital, including those living in slums, the Delhi High Court on Thursday restrained the state government from forcibly razing any hutment — unless it was an encroachment on an existing road — without guaranteeing alternative accommodation.

The government was also told to formulate a concrete relocation policy in cases where slums needed to be razed.

Delivering his last judgment before retirement, Chief Justice A P Shah reproached the forceful eviction of slum-dwellers without giving them prior notice about the demolition exercise, due to which they end up losing all their belongings.

“It cannot be expected that human beings in a jhuggi cluster will simply vanish if their homes are uprooted and their names effaced from government records. They are citizens who help the rest of the city to live a decent life. They deserve protection and respect for the right to life and dignity that the Constitution guarantees them,” Justice Shah held.

The court also noted that slum-dwellers could not be treated as “secondary citizens”. “They are entitled to no less an access to basic survival needs as any other citizen. It is the state’s constitutional and statutory obligation to ensure that if jhuggi-dwellers are forcibly evicted and relocated, they are not worse off. The relocation has to be a meaningful exercise consistent with the rights to life, livelihood and dignity of the jhuggi-dweller,” the judge said.

The court’s remarks came while deciding the petitions filed by a few slum-dwellers whose hutments in Okhla area were razed last year under the relocation plan of the government and civic bodies. While the agencies claimed the demolition was carried out as their slums lay on the Right of Way and constituted encroachment of the land, the residents said they were eligible for relocation under the ‘Scheme for Rehabilitation and Relocation’

Referring to Supreme Court judgments and various international reports on the urban poor, Justice Shah said the issue required a holistic view.

“The services provided by these persons are indispensable to any affluent or even middle-class household. The city would come to a halt without the labour provided by these people. Consideration of fairness is required where these slum dwellers face the threat of being uprooted.”

“Even though these slum clusters may need to be removed for public projects, the consequences can be devastating... What is often overlooked is when a family living in a jhuggi is forcibly evicted, each member loses a bundle of rights — the right to livelihood, shelter, health, education, access to civic amenities and public transport and above all, the right to live with dignity,” he noted.

The court reminded the government of the “binding nature” of its own Masterplan 2021, which provided for relocation of slum-dwellers if their land was acquired for public purposes. Brushing aside the agencies’ argument, the court held that nobody could be denied the right to alternate accommodation.

“As long as they were not on an existing road, they cannot be denied the benefit of rehabilitation. The denial of the benefit of rehabilitation to the petitioners violates their right to shelter guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution,” Justice Shah ruled. The court further noted that the removal of slums as a “beautification” exercise of the city has led to the creation of more slums.

The court then directed the state government to provide accommodation to all eligible residents and ensure that basic civic amenities are available to them.