Times of India: New Dlhi: Monday, 05 May 2014.
On February 22, 2009, residents
of Vasant Vihar's Bhanwar Singh Camp assembled to witness the inauguration of
DDA's in situ redevelopment scheme by then minister of state for urban
development Ajay Maken. Each family was promised a flat with two rooms, a
kitchen, a washroom and access to elevator. Five years on, not a stone has
moved in the area.
Bhanwar Singh Camp is a slum spread over 9.93 acres,
with a population of 6,000. According to the plan
announced by DDA, six acres of the available land was to be used to build flats
for poor and the rest exploited by the developer. The built-up area of each
flat was set at 30.5 square metres. Schools and parks were
also mentioned in the brochure distributed at the inauguration function.
However, the redevelopment scheme is now unlikely to be implemented.
According to an RTI plea filed by one of the residents, Gagan Saran Prajapati,
the camp-selected by DDA for in situ development-is a 'recreational reserve
forest area'. This would imply no construction can be done here. The
information was supplied by DDA's planning department which means that the
Authority knew about the land use and still chose to go ahead with the
inauguration a couple of months before the 2009 general
election.
"While none from DDA has come on record, we have been told
in confidence by the Authority's engineers that since our area is a part of the
Ridge no construction will ever take place there. Then why was the inauguration
held in the first place with lakhs spent on the function?" Prajapati said.
The plan hasn't been officially scrapped yet, sources said.
Prajapati said they last saw the former minister during an election
campaign about two months ago. "We asked him why our houses hadn't been
built yet. He said that they will be his first priority as soon as he is back
in power," said Prajapati.
Bhanwar Singh Camp was one of the four in situ redevelopment schemes
announced by the ministry of urban development in 2009. It
identified 21 clusters in four pockets-Kathputli Colony at
Shadipur Depot, J J Colony Jailorwala Bagh at Ashok Vihar, Bhanwar Singh Camp
at Vasant Vihar and Kalkaji. Work of moving residents to a transit camp is
underway at Kathputli Colony and construction has begun at Kalkaji while the
Ashok Nagar case is being argued in court. DDA could not be reached for
comments.
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