Eight shelters are demolished, leaving many without a roof in Yamuna floodplains

“They came at night and broke down eight shelters here. There were bulldozers and police. People were sleeping… they came and asked us to leave. Some people were taken away from here, supposedly to another shelter. The rest of us are still here. Some sleep close to the river, and some in a park nearby,” said Rajbhar, who is from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh and works as a cook at weddings.

Others, like Mohammad Ali, 25, who is from Rampur in Uttar Pradesh, and Pankaj, 26, from Gorakhpur, moved to another shelter near Nigambodh Ghat when theirs was demolished last week. “Bhaga diya gaya tha (they ran us off),” said Ali, who works at weddings. Pankaj, who also helps at weddings and had been living in the now demolished shelter for six-seven year said, “Nobody knew this was going to happen. The caretaker suddenly asked us to empty the shelter. Contractors usually come here to hire us, so it’s important for us to stay somewhere close by.”

The Yamuna Pushta shelters, set up by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board and managed by NGOs, have been around for a few years now. Aqeel said he had been living in one or the other of the shelters for around eight years. The portacabins that are still standing near Nigambodh Ghat were set up in 2013-14, said Vicky Chandel, the coordinator at the shelter.

A few jhuggis lying along the floodplain were also demolished last week. With her jhuggi demolished, Seema Malik, 40, who said she has been living in the area for nearly 20 years, has been sleeping in the open on the floodplains, with her six-year-old daughter, and her husband, who works at weddings.

At nearby Qudsia Ghat, work is underway on a project to revamp the ghat. The Delhi Development Authority is working to “restore and rejuvenate” the Yamuna floodplains, which includes setting up parks and walkways.

Sunil Kumar Aledia at the Centre for Holistic Development, an organisation that works with homeless people, believes that the demolition drive is on account of the G20 Summit.

Among those using the shelters and people managing ones still standing, there’s fear these will also be demolished eventually. “We’re hearing that even the shelter near Nigambodh Ghat will be demolished,” said Rajbhar.

There is a similar fear at a ‘recovery shelter’ managed by the Centre for Equity Studies at Geeta Ghat. The shelter, also in portacabins, is meant to provide nursing care and support for homeless people who are injured or unwell, or are dealing with infections like tuberculosis. Ramzan, a medical social worker, who has been working at the shelter from 2016 onwards, said there are 16 shelters along the stretch, of which 8 have been demolished so far. “We don’t have any notices so far. But when they took down the other shelters, it just began late in the evening and went on till night,” he said.

According to DUSIB data, some of the Yamuna Pushta shelters have capacity of 50 each, while others have a capacity of over 200.

Asked about the removal of occupants from the Yamuna floodplains, L-G V K Saxena said that encroachment on the eco-sensitive zone cannot be condoned. “There are orders making this very clear. The people who are living on the floodplains are being removed and rehabilitated by DUSIB. There are NGT and Supreme Court orders in place that make it clear that encroachments along the floodplains have to be removed. The sum of these encroachments is that the pollution levels in the river go up… DUSIB has good infrastructure and enough capacity to house the people have have been removed. Many of them are poor people and need to solve supported, but not at the cost of the environment,” he said.