People's Democracy

An Inhumane Judgment On Eviction of Slum Dwellers

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued the following statement on May 10, 2006

THE Supreme Court judgment outrightly rejecting any relief for slum dwellers who are living on public land is singularly inhumane and unjust. It betrays a callous approach to the poor and the homeless. People migrate in large numbers to cities as they are either landless or have no means of livelihood in the rural areas. If slum dwellers have to be removed from public land it should be incumbent upon the government to provide them alternative housing sites before they are evicted. It would have been better if the two-member bench had pointed out the failure of the State to provide the elementary right to housing for its citizens.

Coming in the wake of an earlier judgment directing the removal of all hawkers from the pavements and roads, it is disturbing that the highest court of the land shows itself so cut off from the realities faced by the common people.