Even the homeless in Lutyens’ are better off

FACILITIES Night shelters in Lutyens’s Delhi get mattresses, power, TVS, clean toilets unlike those in other parts of the city

NEW DELHI: Even the homeless have it better in Lutyens’ Delhi, where porta cabin night shelters are posher than the pokey rooms and tarps set up in less privileged parts of the city.

Situated inside a tree-lined campus, the cluster of shelters on Bangla Sahib Road offers family rooms and separate dorms for men, women and children. All come furnished with mattresses with cheerful floral designs, plush pillows, warm woollen blankets, 24x7 electricity, flatscreen TVS, and clean, shared baths and toilets.

They also have doctors visiting twice a week.

In sharp contrast is the tarp shelter at Karkardooma in east Delhi, with unpaved brick flooring, tatty blankets and no electricity. “I have four blankets, but each is as thin as a sheet. I use one to sleep on and fold the other three into half to stay warm. It’s still not enough when you’re sleeping on a cold floor,” said Chandar Singh, 44, a construction labourer who made this shelter his home 20 days ago. Singh shares a red portable toilet stationed on the road, which frequently runs out of water,

At Sarai Kale Khan in southeast Delhi, the caretaker has had the bath cabin removed. “People used it as a toilet, it stank up the place so I got it removed. Everyone, including women, now bathe using tanker water behind the shelter,” he said.

At the Bangla Sahib shelter, residents get morning tea and biscuits and hot dinners served from the gurdwara next door. At the tarpaulin shelter at Patparganj in east Delhi, people are happy with tea. “For the past 10 days, we’ve been getting tea and two biscuits in the morning. It’s great,” said Sunil Kumar, 33, who works in the industrial area nearby and moves into the shelter in winter.

The shelter, like 60 of the 259 shelters housed in tents, have no electricity and rely on chargeable lamps at night.

Doctors’ visits are far more regular in the shelters located in Lutyens’ Delhi, and residents expect quality health services – a woman demanded gel for joint pain, while another asked for pills for high blood pressure.

“I don’t have any more left, I

SOURCED The locality near SK2 park in Noida Sector 93 where the couple lived.

MOHD ZAKIR/HT PHOTO THE HAVENOTS: Many night shelters near Sarai Kale Khan are run under tarpaulin tents with only gasfired lanterns for light, tatty blankets which are as thin as a “sheet”, no separate bathrooms and stinking makeshift toilets. Residents alleged that no doctor has visited them in this season so far.