Slum dwellers evicted during CWG not resettled

Amongst the three lakh slum dwellers who had lost their settlements to the large-scale evictions made by the authorities for beautification and for finding space to build structures for Commonwealth Games, a mere 20 per cent are resettled, said Miloon Kothari, coordinator of the South Asian Regional Programme of the Habitat International Coalition’s Housing and Land Rights Network, here recently.

Kothari, co-author of the Unesco report on “Urban Policies and the Right to the City in India”, which he released here recently, said government agencies who were faster in evicting the settlements did not care to find alternative dwellings for them.

The Unesco report said slum demolitions which took place between 2006 and 2008 in connection with the redevelopment of the river front and the construction of the Athletes Village for the Commonwealth Games, dramatically affected settlements along the embankments of the Yamuna river causing the eviction of about three lakh people.