However, no tribal has ever taken shelter in it till date, apparently due to its location. Some officials have gone on record saying it never served any purpose and that tribal migrants continue to sleep on pavements.

“It was doomed from the beginning. We had expressed reservations about the location even then. The tribals opted to stay away from it because of the presence of anti-social elements in the area. Also, it is located in the eastern fringe of the city while all construction work is taking place on the western periphery,” said Vipul Pandya, general secretary of the Bandhkam Mazdoor Sangathan (BMS), a trade union of construction workers who filed an RTI application seeking information on the status of the night shelter.

“The Khokhra shelter home has remained a non-starter. We have been demanding that a new one be built under the Chimanbhai Bridge. The department has asked the AMC to consider it as an alternative site,” he added.

In its response to Pandya’s RTI application, the department said the same problems were acknowledged by its officials. A letter written by the Tribal Development Commissioner to the AMC Commissioner in February last year states: “No member of the scheduled tribe has benefited from the shelter home. The area around Khokhra overbridge has anti-social elements and tribals are afraid of going there. The Rain Basera has failed to fulfil its objective.”

Other reasons for its failure include the rules framed for its use, which stipulated that it would be available for only eight days for a person at a cost of Rs 5 per day.

The AMC, which was in charge of executing the project, could not explain the reasons for its failure. Madanbhai Lodha, deputy chairman of the estate committee, said: “The warehouse was divided into five parts, three of which are being used by the Industrial Training Institute, Khokhra, while the rest was for the shelter home. We are thinking of taking it back from the ITI to revive the shelter project.”

While the response to Pandya’s RTI plea says the AMC is in charge of executing and running the project while the funding has been done by the Tribal Development department, according to Jasubhai Kachiya, the Estate Officer of East Zone where the shelter is located, there is no shelter run by the corporation. “It is with the Tribal Development department,” he said.