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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Prioritising housing needs of slum-dwellers is not only a moral imperative but now a legal one -Eklavya Vasudev

Prioritising housing needs of slum-dwellers is not only a moral imperative but now a legal one -Eklavya Vasudev

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published Published on Mar 31, 2019   modified Modified on Mar 31, 2019
-The Indian Express

Government agencies and courts can no longer give precedence to one kind of public interest (that of middle and upper classes) over another kind of public interest (that of the slum residents).

On March 18, the Delhi High Court held that slum dwellers are not secondary citizens but citizens with equal rights. Authorities can evict slum dwellers only when their occupation of the land is illegal. Any unannounced eviction without a resettlement and rehabilitation plan is also not permitted. The judgment by a division bench comprising of Justices S Muralidhar and Vibhu Bakru stated that, when approached by persons complaining of forced eviction, courts would now be required to view them not as “encroachers” but as citizens whose rights to rehabilitation have to be determined in terms of law.

Slum dwellers have often been characterised as encroachers by government agencies, mainstream media, and even courts. In popular understanding too, urban slums and their residents have been seen as the antithesis to what is planned and what is legal — a blot on a city’s beauty. Against this popular view, a number of scholars and activists have argued that slum dwellers are not encroachers but citizens with equal rights who should, at the very least, have access to the same rights guaranteed to the rest of us. Political support for the rights of slum dwellers to receive adequate notice before eviction has been infrequent as it has been for their adequate rehabilitation.

The occasional political claim, despite having a sociological basis, has not had sound legal grounding in spite of some well-intentioned decisions by the higher judiciary where the Court has not gone far enough to protect substantive rights of slum dwellers. For instance, in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, the Supreme Court held that the right to life includes the right to livelihood but did not indicate specific reliefs. In Sudama Singh v. Gov. of Delhi, the Delhi High Court laid down safeguards and procedures to be followed by government agencies before proceeding to remove jhuggis/slums, but confusion remained as to whether central agencies would be bound to follow the same procedures or not.

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The Indian Express, 29 March, 2019, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/their-right-to-the-city-delhi-high-court-slums-basti-5647797/?fbclid=IwAR0fZm9o99XBukQw-RiAXSWk40MOuqbKGuo89GCA_bb


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