'We Were Given 48 Hours to Leave': Delhi's Displaced Residents Speak Out on Demolition Drive

Sixty-three families in Bhoomiheen Camp, a resettlement colony wedged between the Tughlakabad Fort and the Mehrauli-Badarpur Road, received notices last month from the Delhi Development Authority ordering them to vacate by July 1. Most are still there. Most have nowhere to go.

The notices are part of a broader enforcement sweep the DDA launched in late June, targeting what it calls "encroachments" on land designated under the Delhi Master Plan 2041. For residents who have lived in these settlements for decades, the language in those notices — clinical, bureaucratic — translates simply to eviction. The sweep has so far touched at least seven clusters across the capital, from Shakurbasti near Patel Nagar to pockets of Sanjay Colony in Okhla, according to figures compiled by the housing rights group Hazards Centre.

One woman, a domestic worker who has lived in Bhoomiheen Camp since 1998, described receiving the notice on a Tuesday afternoon. She said officials visited in groups of four, pasted the paper to her door, and left within minutes. "Nobody explained what it meant," she said. "My neighbour had to read it for me."

A Policy Squeeze Between Two Governments

The timing is politically charged. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's AAP government has been pushing the PM Awas Yojana-Urban scheme — a central government programme — to deliver pucca housing to exactly this demographic. But the DDA reports to the Union Ministry of Housing, not to the Delhi government, which has long created friction over who controls land use decisions in the capital. That jurisdictional fault line has widened this year as the BJP-led Centre accelerates infrastructure projects tied to the Delhi Metro Phase 4 expansion, some of which require land clearance in settlements like Shakurbasti, where the line's Janakpuri West-to-Krishna Park corridor runs nearby.

Activists from the Saathi organisation, which works on urban poor housing rights in West Delhi, say residents in Shakurbasti's JJ cluster — home to roughly 4,200 families — were told as recently as June 20 that relocation to Narela, a peripheral township about 35 kilometres from the city centre, was their only official alternative. "Narela means no work," said one community organiser who has been documenting the notices. "These people walk to their jobs in Patel Nagar and Rajinder Nagar. You cannot move them 35 kilometres away and call it rehabilitation."

Delhi's housing deficit is not abstract. According to the Economic Survey of Delhi 2024-25, the city faces a shortage of approximately 1 million dwelling units, with the overwhelming majority of that gap concentrated among households earning below Rs 10,000 a month. Land prices in East Delhi's Trilokpuri — a resettlement colony that itself emerged from earlier demolition drives in the 1970s — now average Rs 40,000 per square yard for small plots, pricing out the very families resettlement policy is meant to help.

What the Residents Are Asking For

Community meetings held this week at the Okhla Industrial Area community hall drew representatives from at least four affected settlements. The demands are consistent: in-situ rehabilitation, meaning rebuilding on the same land rather than forced relocation; legal recognition under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban scheme before any demolition begins; and independent surveys conducted by resident welfare associations rather than DDA contractors.

Legal aid lawyers from the Human Rights Law Network have filed a petition in the Delhi High Court seeking a stay on demolitions pending a hearing scheduled for July 14. The petition argues that the 48-hour notice period provided to several families violates a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that mandates prior consultation and a minimum 30-day window before evictions affecting more than 50 households.

For the 63 families in Bhoomiheen Camp, July 14 is the date that matters most. If the High Court grants the stay, they gain time. If it does not, the DDA has indicated demolition work could begin the following week. Several families said they have already started dismantling their own rooftops, salvaging corrugated iron sheets and timber — hedging against a future the government has not yet formally decided but which, in their experience, tends to arrive without warning.