Residents clash with police during demolition drive in Delhi’s artists’ colony

The residents of Kathputli Colony near Shadipur Depot, situated at a prime location in central Delhi, woke up to a rude reality on Monday morning. A heavy police posse descended on the locality and started throwing their belonging out of their homes. The bulldozers of Delhi Development Authority (DDA) soon reached the spot.

Clashes ensued between police and local residents, who were mounting resistance to cops. Police eventually had to resort to lathi-charge to disperse the demonstrators, which included women and several social activists among others. Annie Raja from the National Federation of Indian Women also sustained injuries during police action.

Kathputli Colony has been home to nearly 3,500 artists and performers from Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. The neighbourhood, comprising of rows of tin-sheds, resembles World War II camps and has a poor drainage system and deplorabale sanitary conditions.

The Delhi Government has given the responsibility of rehabilitation of local residents to the DDA. The DDA assigned Raheja Developers the task of constructing buildings on the colony’s land. The residents have been promised homes in swanky multi-storeyed buildings in place of their unorganised shanties where have been putting up.

As per the plan, Raheja Developers were to construct 2,800 residential units for slum dwellers and, in return, it would get the permission to construct residential towers and a commercial complex. For this, 2,800 slum dwellers, who had been identified in a survey in January 2011, had to move to a transit camp in Anand Parbat till the construction work was completed.

The attempt by the government to move the residents of the slum to the camp started three years ago. Some families have already moved to a transit camp in central Delhi’s Anand Parbat. However, most of the residents do not trust the authorities and have been resisting the plan tooth and nail.

Previously, the government had planned to move the residents to other areas. In 1986, the government wanted to move the residents to Vasant Kunj. In 1996, the government planned to rehabilitate them in Mehrauli. Similarly, in 2002, the then Urban Development Minister told the assembly that residents of Kathputli Colony would be rehabilitated in Dwarka’s Sector 16. The DDA took up the slum redevelopment project in 2007. Under the public private partnership model, the work on redevelopment of colony was handed over to Raheja Developers.

The ambitious redevelopment project has been hanging fire since. We don’t trust the DDA and Raheja Developers, residents say resolutely.