100,000 face being homeless over Delhi demolition drive

India’s top court last month ordered the removal of “encroachers including by forcible eviction” from Khori village, which is home to about 10,000 families of informal workers, including street food vendors, cleaners and tuk-tuk drivers.

Indian authorities began demolishing hundreds of homes in a village on the outskirts of New Delhi yesterday, in a move that housing activists said could leave 100,000 people homeless. India’s top court last month ordered the removal of “encroachers including by forcible eviction” from Khori village, which is home to about 10,000 families of informal workers, including street food vendors, cleaners and tuk-tuk drivers. Their homes were built illegally on protected forest land, which is part of the Aravalli mountain range that stretches nearly 700km through northern and western India. About 300 homes were razed yesterday amid monsoon rains by the municipality of Faridabad district in Haryana state, according to activists at the site, and thousands more are set to be destroyed before the Supreme Court deadline of July 19. “We don’t have anywhere to go. We will get drenched here. I have small children,” one woman – who was not named – told local news channel NDTV after her home of 15 years was demolished. Neither district authorities nor local police responded to requests for comment. The demolition drive started a day after the state announced a rehabilitation plan that would make residents eligible to live in low-cost flats if they met certain criteria, such as having an annual family income of less than Rs300,000 ($4,025). Under the plan, Rs2,000 will be given to the residents to rent alternative housing for a period of six months. Housing campaigners criticised the release of the plan one day before the demolition, and urged the government to conduct a survey to identify beneficiaries, give them ample time to prove their claims, and also link people to welfare schemes for work. “Within 24 hours of just announcing the plan, you destroy the homes? What kind of welfare state is this?,” said Nirmal Gorana, member of the Khori Mazdoor Awas Sangharsh Samiti, an organisation representing the interests of residents. “You cannot uproot them and leave them to die in a pandemic,” he said. India’s coronavirus caseload of nearly 31mn infections is the world’s second-highest behind the US. The United Nations last year said access to adequate housing was the “front line defence against the Covid-19 outbreak”. Video footage posted on Twitter by district authorities showed an earthmover bulldozing and demolishing homes, with bricks and corrugated tin roofs crashing down as police in riot gear and residents looked on.