'Give us tents and water ' displaced slum dwellers from Nizamuddin urge govt

New Delhi, Nov 29 (PTI) Stranded after their houses were razed, residents of the slum cluster near Humayun tomb have asked the government to give them "at least tent and water."
     The slum cluster between the Sundar Nursery and the Delhi Public School inhabited by about 1,000 to 1,500 people, most of whom engaged as ragpickers, street hawkers, maids, labourers and small-scale traders, was demolished in a drive following a court's order last week.
     Most of these slum dwellers allege that they were asked to vacate their houses in two days with no offer from the government for relocation.
     "It has been a week and we are literally living on the streets. Can't the government provide tents and water at least?" Dimple, one of the residents of the slum cluster, asked.
     "I have a family of five and I have been living here for the last fifty years. Why didn't the government think about us once before taking this step? We are not even getting a place to live," Dimple told PTI.
     By the time bulldozers were done with their work on the morning of November 21, the place bore the image of a huge junkyard, composed of household articles, furniture, and everything else that made the razed shanties home.
     Mohammad Chand, a worker at a sofa repair shop, has been visiting the demolished area every day, only to check if he can find something of his that may be lying beneath the rubble.
     "We were given notice for just two days and then they arrived with the bulldozers. They came with 18 to 20 bulldozers and reduced this place to rubble in just four to five hours. Many of us could not even shift our belongings. All the people who live here are poor and do not have the capacity to move to another house overnight," Chand, who is staying at a relative's house, told PTI.
     On Tuesday, Delhi Urban Development Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj alleged that through its Land And Development Office (LNDO) department, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre took a "cruel stand" in the high court to demolish the slums. He said that the Delhi Development Authority was "duty-bound to rehabilitate" the poor people before their houses were demolished.
     "According to the law, the central government's DDA was duty-bound to rehabilitate these poor people before the demolition of their homes.
     "Even though the high court had provided relief in view of the Graded Response Action Plan-3, the Centre provided special permission to demolish their homes in the winter. It is shocking that the Centre did not think about these poor families, their children and the elderly," Bharadwaj said.
     Another resident of the slum cluster, Dharam Singh, pointed towards a mound of rubble — his house for the last four decades.
     "I have been living here for the last five decades and we went homeless overnight. The government talks about 'Jahan jhuggi, Wahin Makan,' but does something else in reality," Singh said, as he too asked for some temporary shelter and water to survive the winter.
     On November 19, the Station House Officer of the area came to the slum and went door to door asking the residents to vacate their houses in two days, recalled Ahmed Ali, a neighbour of Singh.
     He said the demolition caused his children to skip their exams.
     "I have been living here since 1990 and I have five children. We were not given any notice and asked to vacate our places all of a sudden. The SHO here went door to door asking people to move out in two days. My children were in the middle of their exams and because of this demolition, they had to skip it too," Ali said.
     Mansi Singh, a student of Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya, said her parents had to convince the school to postpone her exams.
     "I am in class 6 and we were having our unit test which I had to skip. We had to move out of our house because they were bulldozed and because of this, I couldn't study for my test too," said the daughter of a househelp and car mechanic.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)