Demolition of colonies housing poorer people happens with shocking frequencies in bigger cities all over India. Let us consider the demolition of the colony popularly called “Madrasi Camp” in the Jungpura area of South Delhi last month as one of the recent examples of this practice which affects thousands of people each time. Let us also see how and why demolitions were carried out in the vicinity of the posh Hiranandani Gardens in Powai, Mumbai, about a year earlier.
The Madrasi Camp Jungpura had existed for over 60 years before it was demolished at the beginning of June 2025. The able-bodied men worked as workers and helpers in factories and commercial establishments; many women worked as domestic workers in the homes of wealthier people in Jungpura, Lajpat Nagar and nearby. A total of 370 homes were razed of which 215 families got flats in Narela, nearly 45 km away, while 155 were left without rehabilitation of any kind.
According to the authorities, Madrasi Camp was located directly atop a critical section of the Barapullah embankment, narrowing the natural flow of rainwater and acting as a chokepoint. Delhi High Court orders in 2023 had directed the Delhi Development Authority and the Delhi government to clear these encroachments before the 2024 monsoon.
Officials told some residents they did not meet cut-off documentation norms—such as having proof of residence before 2015, or voter ID cards linked to the address. Several residents say survey workers even asked whether they had voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. At least six families claimed that surveyors came with printed lists and suggested their names were missing because they hadn’t voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
This shows the totally arbitrary basis of deciding who is eligible for alternative accommodation for several reasons. Often, voters who have voted in several elections in the past suddenly find that their names are missing in the current electoral rolls. Furthermore, people can have emergencies and convincing reasons due to which they couldn’t vote in a particular election. Finally, it is not compulsory by law and cannot be penalised in any manner whatsoever. It’s also a fact that people in general are excluded by the political process and the results of elections don’t make any real difference to their lives – though that’s a topic for another discussion.
Those who got flats in far-away Narela also have their tales of woe. Many of them cannot move there and retain their jobs which are closer to the now-demolished Madrasi Camp. Many children attended a Tamil government-aided school near Barapullah. They can’t continue in the same school if their families relocate to Narela; hence, their education suffers. Moreover, the condition of the flats allotted in Narela is also quite bad overall and not really fit for modern human habitation.
Thus, in sum, it can be said that ALL the families whose homes were demolished in the Madrasi Camp early last month got a very bad deal from the authorities. Their rights to shelter, right to livelihood and right to education were all severely attacked – in sum their basic human rights were grossly violated.
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A year ago, on 3 June 2024, two Municipal Corporation notices were pasted on the doors of a toilet and a storehouse, in Jai Bhim Nagar, a working-class colony near the upscale Hiranandani Gardens area in Powai, Mumbai ordering the residents to vacate their homes within three days, since the land belonged to the Hiranandani Group. Just three days later, 6 June 2024, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), aided by local police, demolished the colony and rendered hundreds of people homeless. Many of these people were in fact workers who had helped to build the posh apartment complexes of Hiranandani Gardens. And many of the women worked as domestic workers in the Hiranandani Gardens apartments.
The story of Jai Bhim Nagar began decades ago. In 1984, the government signed a pact with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to build low-cost housing. The government sold the Powai land to the Hiranandani Group in 2002. The group used a part of the property to set up a labour camp in 2002 for their construction workers. This was what came to be known as Jai Bhim Nagar.
The Hiranandani Group was to construct flats measuring 40 sq m and 80 sq m in size on the 230-acre land. Instead, a large majority of apartments were amalgamated and sold as luxury flats of 2,000 to 4,000 sq ft. A state-government body, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority rightly accused the Hiranandani Group of converting low-cost housing into luxury flats. But the group seems to have “regularised” matters with its’ considerable money power. In 2012, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) filed an FIR against Niranjan Hiranandani, senior bureaucrat TC Benjamin and others to investigate their roles in the scam. However, in 2014, ACB investigators filed a closure report on the scam without producing an investigation report. And, in 2023, the developer was given a clean chit by the Bombay HC, allowing it to “proceed with the development of Powai Area Development Scheme (PADS) without any embargo/restrictions including regarding size of tenements”.
Be that as it may, despite the clear violations of law by the Hiranandani Group, the authorities aided them in demolishing the houses in which their own workers lived. A clear case of Big Business allying with the Government to take over land occupied by working people.
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Modern definitions of rights include the right of all human beings to live with dignity, to education, to be able to earn a livelihood – basic rights which every human being is entitled to by virtue of being human. The authorities, whose duty it is to provide housing to all sections of the people, not only fail in their duty to provide housing but also wantonly demolish the homes which working people have built on barren or sometimes marshy or uninhabitable land after suitable reclamation.
Many High Court judgments interpreting Article 21 of the Constitution have laid down that the right to shelter is included in right to life. But as actions on the ground show, the government authorities do not provide millions of people with habitable housing. In fact, they use arbitrary rules to deprive working families of houses they have built from scratch. Or they come to the aid of greedy, rich builders to demolish the homes of working families and take over their land to construct more luxury housing beyond the reach of working people. The courts which uphold the right to shelter on the one hand also give “clean chits” to rich builders to get away with gross violations and even to take over areas made habitable by the hard work of the toiling people, while paying lip service to “rehabilitation”
The problem isn’t population—it’s exclusion, inequality, and a skewed access to resources. Just 20% of the world’s population consumes 80% of global resources, while 3% of elites hold 75% of private land. Meanwhile, slum dwellers, who form 50% of the population, own less than 5% of land in big cities. People come to cities for work and are not provided housing by the authorities whose duty it is to do so. People clear up marshy and barren land to set up working class colonies – which are subsequently demolished on some pretext, and they are forced into homelessness.
We must fight to ensure that the authorities provide every citizen with housing and education and the chance to earn a livelihood. We must strongly condemn attempts to demolish the homes of working people without giving them alternative accommodation which allows them proper access to education, health services and livelihoods.
Source of image: https://scroll.in/article/1049710/shattered-lives-where-do-the-victims-of-tughlaqabad-demolition-drive-in-delhi-go
By Drs Venkatesh Sundaram and Indu Prakash Singh
