Maken to Pushta dwellers' rescue

YAMUNA PUSHTA: April 29 is a red letter day for 50-year-old Hira Lal. Not only was his jhuggi in Yamuna Pushta''s Sanjay Amar Colony razed down that day, his 25-year-old son Jitender was also killed after a wall collapsed on him.
"He was trying to collect some of our belongings from our jhuggi when the bulldozer razed it. We rushed him to Shushrut Trauma Centre, but he didn''t survive," said Lal.
Ever since that day, Hiralal''s tryst with the government offices began."In the days soon after the demolition we could not go to claim our plot.
Now the officials simply push our files back," said Lal. He has set up home in Pushta again. "What can we do, we have nowhere to go," he bemoaned.
Lal was one of the 950 applicants who had gathered at a two-day camp to get his papers verified that would be a ticket for him to get a shelter.
Of the total number of people who visited the camp to get their papers verified, 350 were found eligible for getting plots.
"The camp was held to facilitate the verification of the ration cards and other identity and address proof for establishing the slumdwellers'' identity and the fact that they settled in Yamuna Pushta before 1998," said New Delhi MP Ajay Maken.
According to Maken, so far only 3,600 slumdwellers have received plots in lieu of their settlements in Pushta. The DDA had earlier evinced its inability to give more than 6,000 plots.
But the MCD later gave land for another 1,000 plots. "Instead of helping these displaced people, the officials are trying to reduce the number of valid claims for relocation by showing
one rule or the other," claimed Maken.