DDA

“We have written around 200 online complaints, given seven petitions, have even written to the Lieutenant Governor and Delhi government’s forest department,” says Amit Kumar, a resident of Dwarka Sector 8, who is leading the campaign against the felling of trees for a storm water drain project in this vast Delhi colony. “Dwarka is one of the most polluted areas in Delhi. There is only one park in Sector 8 that serves all its approximately 15,000 residents, which includes the nearby Bagdola village and Raj Nagar Part 2 as well. Earlier, a park was destroyed to make way for a sports…

The BJP-led Union Cabinet recently gave a nod to the Kejriwal government’s proposal to give ownership rights to those living in 1,797 unauthorised colonies in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. A bill to legislate the move is likely to be introduced in the current winter session of Parliament.  Elections for the Legislative Assembly of NCT Delhi are due in January 2020. Ever since the cabinet nod to the regularisation came about, BJP has been making extra effort to engage with these communities and portraying itself at the forefront of  the decision. When we contacted them for this report, its…

Kanika*, a 15-year-old girl, carries her two-year-old sister Alisha in her arms. The portions of her hands and arms visible outside her half-sleeved magenta kurta are full of abrasions. “I’ve shown it to the doctor many times and he’s given me medicine but it remains itchy,” she says. She attributes the itchiness to the purportedly contaminated water in her home of one and a half years, in Anand Parbat transit camp. Her move to this central Delhi neighbourhood -- five kilometres from her former home – was forced and put her out of school, Kanika recalls. “Alisha was an infant…

On a bright winter Sunday, you may feel the warm sun beckoning you. It seems to say: Take your car out and enjoy my glory even more. Surely, there would be little traffic on a holiday. But not in Delhi. Especially not if you plan to drive from South Delhi to Gurgaon or vice versa, through the mess that is the Rao Tula Ram Marg flyover. The beautiful sunny day soon becomes a sweaty anger-spewing, abuse-hurling one. And this is the road that connects South Delhi to the airport, which should have a smooth hassle free ride. The bottleneck you…

On 11th October the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs notified a land pooling policy under the 2021 Master Plan for Delhi, to address the large scale housing gaps in Delhi. Through this policy, Delhi is set to get 17 lakh new affordable housing units, with a capacity to accommodate 76 lakh people. This policy signals a change in the Delhi Development Authority’s (DDA) model of land acquisition and development to a ‘land pooling model’, where the private sector and land owners are both partners in the development. However, while the policy is a first step, the release of land…