Homeless people don’t live, they just exist: HC

NEW DELHI: Remarking that the homeless don’t live but merely exist, the Delhi high court directed the relocation of five slum residents who were shifted from one slum to another to facilitate the expansion of the New Delhi railway station.

The order came on a petition by the slum dwellers, who had challenged their eviction from Lahori Gate for the expansion of the New Delhi railway station from nine platforms to 16.

Delivering the order on Monday ( July 4), justice C Hari Shankar said the petitioner slum dwellers would be entitled to an alternative accommodation if they produced documentary evidence to show that they lived in the original slum colony (Shahid Basti jhuggi in Nabi Karim) before November 30, 1998.

The slum dwellers were moved to the second slum colony on the Lahori Gate side in 2003.

The judge said that, if the parameters were met, the residents would fall within the relocation policy of the ministry of housing and urban affairs.

“Indeed, they (the homeless) do not live, but merely exist; for life, with its myriad complexions and contours, as envisaged by Article 21 of our Constitution, is unknown to them,” the court said.

The court also held that the petitioners would be allotted alternative accommodation, in accordance with the relocation policy, as expeditiously as possible, and not later than six months from the date of production of the requisite documents before the Railways.

Stating that slum dwellers are “hounded by poverty and penury” and do not stay there out of choice, the judge asserted that law is worth tinsel, if the underprivileged cannot get justice.

“The court is required to remain alive to the fact that such litigants do not have access to exhaustive legal resources…,” the court said in a 32-page judgment.

The petitioners said they were living in Shahid Basti slum cluster since the 1980s. They also claimed that their names were entered in the electoral register, and they were exercising their voting rights. They said they possessed ration cards and other documents to back up their residence claim.

In 2002-2003, the Railways, which was seeking to convert the New Delhi Railway Station into a “world-class facility”, wanted to acquire the land on which the petitioners were situated.

The petitioners argued they were shifted to another location on the opposite side of the tracks, and set up a slum colony there.

The Delhi high court held that if a resident of the Lahori Gate slum was a jhuggi dweller, albeit on the other side of the tracks, from a period prior to the November 30, 1998 cutoff date, it would be unjust and unfair to deny them the benefit of relocation.

Law, with all its legalese, is worth tinsel if the underprivileged cannot get justice. DELHI HIGH COURT