20,00,000 in Delhi to lose livelihoods after sealing drive: Blame Congress, AAP and BJP
As many as 20 lakh people in the national capital are staring at a loss of livelihood in the backdrop of the sealing drive targeting commercial establishments that kick-started on December 22, 2017. And the blame for their plight lies squarely at the doors of the political class - the Congress, the BJP and the AAP - all of them without exception.
While all three parties are trying hard to look concerned, truth be told, they sat on this problem ever since it first reared its head in early 2000 with rapid illegal commercialisation of properties in the city.
Why the sealing drive
The rapid influx of migrants and the open political invitation to settle in with an assurance that their settlements will be regularised has had a disastrous impact on Delhi's civic amenities.
The Master Plan conceived in 1957 to help Delhi grow as a planned city was found in tatters with zero implementation on the ground.
Having caught the Congress government napping, the Delhi High Court ordered that construction of commercial properties coming up in residential areas be stopped, and the existing ones sealed. In December 2005, the Delhi HC directed the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to remove more than 18,000 illegal constructions spread across 12 zones of the city. Resistance from traders resulted in the death of four people.
Shaken out of its slumber, the government moved an ordinance to stop the sealing. The National Capital Territory of Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Bill was introduced as an ordinance for a year in 2007. The ordinance came as a relief to traders as it did not allow demolition of any building constructed before February 7, 2007.
The ordinance got three extensions, each time for a year, and was finally passed in the Delhi Assembly on December 12, 2011, making it a law. However, the court raised questions over how the law passed by the government adhered to the Master Plan.
As is mostly the case with governments in India, the authorities remained busy looking for band-aid solutions. However, even the quick-fix solutions were looked into only when court raps proved too hard to take, else the governments, the municipal corporations and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), responsible for land allocation in the capital, allowed illegal establishments to grow right under their nose.
The municipal corporation kept collecting conversion charges from traders. Conversion charge is what a trader pays to get residential land categorised as commercial. Charges collected from traders, that were meant to be used for the development of these properties and the areas that housed them, were directed towards needs such as the payment of staff salaries by the cash-strapped MCDs. The DDA, which works under the Union government, encouraged shopkeepers to pay up by reducing the charges from Rs 89,090 per square metre to Rs 22,274 per square metre.
It is tragic to notice how plans for Delhi to grow as a planned city involved no planning, and no vision or intent — just convenience and political opportunism at the core — bringing us to the current crisis.
Current crisis
The sealing drive in Delhi has been a cat-and-mouse game between the Supreme Court and authorities ruling (definitely not governing) the city. Every time the court orders a crackdown, governments take the ordinance route for relief. While that lasts, many more establishments come up.
Demands for amending the Master Plan 2021 to allow mixed use of land, that will let residential properties run businesses, has been gathering dust. Some say this will bring the government of the day in direct confrontation with the Supreme Court, which is asking for Delhi to be saved from mindless, senseless concretisation, which is pitching hard to help save the city from turning into a city gasping for open spaces.
On January 30, a joint meeting of political parties to think through a solution ended in disaster, without solutions. When egos are bigger than issues, you know politics is at its worst.
No party will tell us why it has waited all these years to end this crisis. We don't know why the municipal corporations, ruled by the BJP, have not asked the Centre to amend the Master Plan or for that matter stopped illegal constructions, distributing licences to establishments without a care for the law or the future of the city.
Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also must answer why he has not done anything in the past three years on the issue and is now wanting to reach the Supreme Court for relief. Attempts to appear as the crusader now by boycotting the president's address and marching up and down the streets is political posturing at its worst.
Congress' Delhi president Ajay Maken, too, must explain why his government slept through its tenure instead of finding a lasting solution.
Dead end
There are also those who allege that the governments have not allowed this to happen because they actually want the small traders out of the way for bigger and flashier malls to come in.
It doesn't matter which one is true, or if both are true, not even if neither is correct. With more than 20,00,000 people staring at an uncertain future, the alarming reality is nobody is bothered about finding a way out.