Why the judiciary is responsible for the current spate of slum demolitions in Delhi

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In the first week of June, hundreds of houses in Madrasi Camp, a slum cluster in Delhi's Jangpura neighbourhood, were demolished by the Delhi Development Authority. The demolition followed an order from the Delhi High Court, passed on July 8, 2024, in a public interest litigation.
The litigation had nothing to do with Madrasi Camp – its residents were not even a party to the case.
The original petition was filed against two private builders for alleged illegal construction in a completely different neighborhood of Delhi, Shaheen Bagh, several kilometers away from Jangpura. In a sweeping order, the High Court expanded the scope of the petition, directing authorities to remove all encroachments from the Yamuna floodplains, a move that suddenly put thousands of homes in slum clusters abutting the river, including those in Madrasi Camp, at risk of demolition.
'This is a classic case of the court passing an order without appreciating the legal protections available to slum dwellers,' argued Talha Abdul Rahman, an Advocate on Record at the Supreme Court who represented some of the residents in court. 'The order was passed without even hearing the people whose lives it would upend.'
The demolition at Madrasi Camp is not an isolated incident. Over the last year, Delhi has witnessed a spate of evictions from slums, often carried out with little to no notice. According to legal experts, this has been enabled by a recent shift in the judiciary's approach, which has increasingly tolerated summary evictions and diluted the legal rights of the urban poor.
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Safety net
For over a decade, slum dwellers in Delhi were protected by a robust legal framework. The foundation was laid by the Delhi High Court's landmark 2010 judgment in Sudama Singh v Government of Delhi. The court held that the right to housing is a fundamental right and that slum residents could not be treated as 'secondary citizens'. It mandated 'meaningful engagement' with residents before any eviction and directed the government to frame a comprehensive rehabilitation policy.
This led to the enactment of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board Act in 2010 and the subsequent notification of the Delhi Slum & JJ Rehabilitation and Relocation Policy in 2015. The policy laid down a clear three-pronged test for a slum to be eligible for rehabilitation: it must have come up before January 1, 2006; the individual shanties within it must have been built before January 1, 2015; and it must consist of at least 50 households.
The policy prioritised on-site rehabilitation – upgrading the slum where it stood or relocating residents within a five-kilometer radius to ensure their livelihoods and children's education were not disrupted.
This framework was further cemented in 2019 by the Delhi High Court's judgment in Ajay Maken v Union of India. The court explicitly warned authorities against viewing slum dwellers as 'illegal encroachers' and laid down a detailed protocol for surveys and rehabilitation, making it clear that no demolition could occur without first completing this process.
U-turn
In 2022, however, the judiciary signalled a significant change of attitude when it came to slum dweller rights. In Vaishali (Minor) v Union of India, the Delhi High Court ruled that the 2015 rehabilitation policy was applicable only to the residents of 675 slum clusters identified in a list estimated to be three decades old, prepared by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board.
'This judgment has been the turning point,' said Anupradha Singh, an advocate and co-founder of the Nyay Neeti Foundation, which provides legal aid to marginalised communities. 'This list was prepared in the 1990s and has not even been notified. It is not mentioned in the 2015 policy or its parent Act.'
The 69th National Sample Survey Office report from 2012 identified 6,343 slums in Delhi. By limiting the policy's protection to just 10% of them, the High Court's judgment made lakhs of slum residents vulnerable to eviction without rehabilitation.
'Welfare legislation must be interpreted in a liberal, inclusionary manner,' Singh said. 'However, this judgment is based on apprehension and exclusion.'
This exclusionary approach has since been followed by the High Court in a series of cases in which the court has refused to provide relief to residents of demolished slums because of them not being part of the 675-cluster list. The Supreme Court upheld this decision in July 2023, further cementing the restrictive interpretation.
Protector to destroyer
The case of Madrasi Camp slum is another example of this new judicial approach that does not centre the fundamental rights of slum dwellers. The original public interest litigation in the Shabnam Burney case had nothing to do with the slum. Instead, it was a targeted petition against two builders in Shaheen Bagh.
'The court fell into error by expanding the scope of the petition to the whole of Delhi and passing a carte blanche order,' said Rahman. He contended that the order was passed in ignorance of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board Act and the National Capital Territory of Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Second (Amendment) Act, which protect these slums.
Significantly, the High Court's order even bypassed the protection granted to the list of 675 slums in its own 2022 Vaishali order. Rahman pointed out that Madrasi camp was within that list.
The court's order in Shabnam Burney effectively gave the executive a free pass to carry out demolitions of any slums it deems to be on 'the Yamuna river bank, river bed and drains flowing into river Yamuna'.
'The authorities are now using this court order as a shield to carry out demolitions,' said Kamlesh Kumar Mishra, an advocate who has also represented slum dwellers. 'They go to the ground and say, 'We are only following the court's directions.''
Indeed, demolitions have been carried out in the Bhoomiheen camp in Kalkaji, Chander Shekhar Azad colony in Wazirpur, Shiv Basti in Patel Nagar and Sanjay Camp in Gokal Puri, even though all of them are part of the list of 675 protected slum list.
This trend, of the judiciary providing open sanction to the executive for demolitions, is what legal experts find most alarming. 'The state wants to shun its responsibilities and put the burden on the court,' said Harshit Anand, a Supreme Court advocate who has represented slum dwellers in eviction cases. 'The court, in turn, is becoming more executive-minded than the executive itself.'
Mishra described this as 'windshield mentality'. 'A person travelling in a car would always see jhuggi dwellers, street vendors or the homeless as something which is dirtying their view and their roads,' he explained. 'The courts are failing to see that the very people whose homes they are ordering to be demolished are the ones who are servicing the city.'
Human cost
The consequences of these demolitions are devastating. Families who have lived in these areas for decades, with their livelihoods and social networks deeply embedded in the locality, are suddenly uprooted.
In the case of Madrasi Camp, residents are being offered rehabilitation in Narela, nearly 40 kilometres away. 'Most of these people are daily wagers, domestic workers, drivers,' said Rahman. 'How can they travel 40 km every day for work? Their children go to nearby schools. Their entire lives will be disrupted.'
Even for those who are deemed eligible for rehabilitation, the process is fraught with uncertainty and hardship. They are often shifted to poorly constructed transit camps or relocated to flats in far-flung areas that lack basic amenities like schools, shops, and transport.
The courts, once seen as the last resort for the city's most vulnerable, now seem to be overlooking their plight. 'There has been a shift in the judicial attitude,' said Singh. 'The courts are not inclined to grant relief. They see these people as illegal encroachers.'