Shorn of unauthorised tag, residents now breathe easy

The ordinance gives a huge relief to the dwellers of unauthorised colonies in the city as it has revised the cut off date of regularisation from 2007 to June 2014. “We welcome the decision as it is a ‘historic’ decision in the larger interest of people of Delhi,” said Satish Upadhyay, Delhi BJP president. The regularisation of unauthorised colonies is being seen as a big pre-poll announcement as over 40 lakh people are estimated to live in these colonies in the city which has a total of 1.19 crore of voters. Interestingly, BJP was the first to flay former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit when she had announced to regularise 1639 unauthorised colonies in 2008 by getting provision certificates distributed to their representatives by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Dikshit also had notified these 895 colonies before 2013 Delhi assembly elections for regularisation but on 2007 cut off date. The parliament has already passed an amendment to provide protection to all the construction in Delhi by December, 2017. These unauthorised colonies are mostly inhabited by migrants from east Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, known as Poorvanchalis, and are spread in all the assembly segments of Delhi but have decisive majority in at least five assembly segments and strong presence in another 12 seats of 70 member Delhi assembly.

“The BJP’s central government has tried to fool the residents of unauthorised colonies through its last minute pre-election deceptive announcement about the regularisation of these colonies,” said Nagendra Sharma, spokesperson of AAP. “The Modi government’s announcement is nothing but a repeat of what Sheila Dikshit had done before the 2008 assembly elections for which it was held guilty by the Lokayukta,” he added.