Hope for Delhi’s 14 lakh homeless

At least 14 lakh homeless people in the capital, including women, children, infirm and ailing, who were housed in shelters demolished by the Sheila Dikshit government, may get some relief from the biting cold.

The Supreme Court (SC) and the high court have castigated the Congress government’s inhuman attitude towards the city’s homeless.

Chiding Delhi for failing to provide shelter to the homeless, the SC had on Wednesday asked the state government to make arrangements by that evening. Following the court rebuke, the Dikshit government is believed to have identified 35 places where homeless people gather.

There has been a dip in the number of night shelters — from 46 to 32 — owing to the government’s beautification drive in the name of the Commonwealth Games slated for October this year. Among the users of the night shelters are pushcart pullers, cycle-rickshaw pullers, tea-stall and dhaba workers and labourers of construction sites.

The government’s utter neglect for the homeless has forced activists to move court. Miloon Kothari, former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing says, “This is criminal negligence on the part of the authorities. The apex court’s intervention may finally bring some respite to these people.”

“The government is so concerned about creating infrastructure for the Commonwealth Games that it has blinded itself to the trauma of the homeless people. According to the Delhi Master Plan, there has to be one night shelter for every one lakh population. Delhi has only 12 shelters today. What’s worse, over 10,000 homeless women in the capital don’t have a single night shelter for them,” said Indu Prakash Singh of Indo-Global Social Service Society, an organisation that has been running shelters in Delhi.