New Delhi: Despite promising sweeping reforms for the city’s slum rehabilitation programme, Delhi’s new policy draft is already raising eyebrows among experts and activists who fear a repeat of past missteps ranging from developer exits and ecological violations to the displacement of vulnerable communities.
The Delhi government, in collaboration with the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), has unveiled a set of proposals aimed at accelerating slum redevelopment through in situ rehabilitation across all eligible clusters, irrespective of their current land use. The initiative, floated under a public-private partnership model, is positioned as a revival effort to address the city’s sprawling informal settlements, which shelter over 3 million residents.
Yet critics point out that the roadmap is eerily familiar to previous attempts that stalled mid-way or ended in controversy.
“The failure of earlier in situ rehabilitation projects like Kathputli Colony and Kalkaji serves as a warning,” said a senior urban policy researcher. “Poor coordination, lack of trust among residents, and the absence of adequate social infrastructure made those redevelopments models of what not to do.”
While the current proposal suggests developers may construct the requisite Economically Weaker Section (EWS) units in nearby zones and use the rest of the land for commercial or group housing based on floor area ratio (FAR), urban planners warn this could lead to spatial segregation. “Shifting poor families out of prime land pockets for commercial viability can institutionalise economic exclusion,” said an architect familiar with previous slum design consultations.
The environment is another point of contention. Past redevelopments on ecologically sensitive lands, such as those bordering the Yamuna floodplains or within the Aravalli influence zone, have triggered judicial scrutiny and public protests. While this policy promises site identification and cluster mapping by the government or DDA, it remains unclear whether environmental assessments will precede approvals.
Moreover, the fact that all land-owning agencies, including the DDA, are now governed by the BJP has brought political optics into focus. Industry Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa, presenting the taskforce’s report, claimed the unified political control will streamline decision-making. “We will move forward together, but not without accommodating the sentiments of Delhiites,” he said.
However, such statements ring hollow for those who’ve seen past promises fall apart. For example, DDA’s previous tenders for 22,000 EWS units saw limited response from developers due to funding gaps and viability concerns, issues that haven’t yet been fully resolved.
The policy also includes provisions to ease redevelopment of group housing and DDA flats over 50 years old. It proposes reducing minimum area norms for projects, allowing fast-track approvals, and relaxing cooperative society rules. While these changes aim to revive stagnating neighbourhoods, they too face questions over execution capacity and community consent.
The taskforce’s recommendation to lower the redevelopment consent threshold to 75 per cent among cooperative members is designed to unlock stuck projects. But housing rights advocates caution that this could also lead to coercive tactics in vulnerable societies.
In a city where land is political currency and real estate has deep environmental consequences, Delhi’s latest push to redevelop slums may look different on paper, but many fear it could play out as business as usual, displacing the poor in the name of development, again.