Without any notice, the workforce of the Ahmedabad Urban Development Board (AUDA) had descended in the Bakra Mandi area of Ranip to demolish houses.

The mega-city in the making, “Aapnu Amdavad”, needed development and it was imperative to break down inhabited homes to widen the roads.

As the panic-stricken people ran helter skelter, Shamshad realised that the demolitions were completely illegal as there was neither notice nor an alternative rehabilitation plan for the 3000 residents of the area. Being a lawyer himself, he knew the only way to stop the destruction was to get a stay order from the High Court. By noon, when he finally got the stay order, 175 of the 700 plus houses had been razed. For over two years now, the homeless gave been staying in temporary accommodation.

Today, the story is being repeated in Salatnagar, Behrampura, Khanpur and Odhav of Ahmedabad, Manjalpur and Suleman ni chawli in Vadodara, Kalol and Katlakhana in Gandhinagar, Vyara in Surat and many other urban slums of the state. Forget provision of civic amenities in urban slums, the low economic slum zones of urban Gujarat are being demolished without any provision of rehabilitation for the displaced .

“In the last five years, we have obtained stay orders in 29 locations where urban poor were being displaced for ‘development’ and ‘beautification’ of the city,” says Subramaniam Iyer, an advocate of the civil rights organisation Jansangharsh Manch. “In many other places, like Satellite in Ahmedabad, a five-star hotel is coming up after the displacement of hundreds of poor people,” he says. This despite the declaration of the Gujarat State Urban Development Policy in July 2004 and the Garib Samriddhi Yojna (GSY) in April 2007, both of which promised in-situ upgradation instead of relocation of the slum residents.

Both development policies promised provision of basic infrastructure, civic amenities, playgrounds, schools and community halls in urban slums.

The Gujarat State Urban Development Policy 2004 clearly states that relocation, if any, will be carried out in consultation with the affected slum dwellers, keeping in mind the distance from workplace and other livelihood factors and this only if the state government considers relocation unavoidable. Also, the displaced people are to be shifted within 2 kilometers of the original site and given assistance of Rs 1000.

“In last five years, at least 5,000 localities in the entire state have been demolished to pave the way for development. But there are only a handful of areas where people have received any rehabilitation package,” says Iyer.