NEW DELHI: The thought of being uprooted from her home to make way for the Pink Line of Delhi Metro brings tears to the eyes of Hajra Begum. The 65-year-old arrived in Trilokpuri with her husband in 1976, during the Emergency, when the place was little more than a forest. Over the next 42 years, she recalled, they built a house on their 25-square-yard plot, and the family grew. In between, she lost her husband.
In her family of 14—including her three sons and their extended families, each residing on a separate floor—nearly everyone has visited the new houses built across the road by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) for those whose homes will be razed to build a 290-metre-long viaduct on the Pink Line. Her house, No. 126 in Block 15, is among the 108 houses earmarked for demolition.
“My heart didn’t allow me to visit,” Begum said, her teary eyes fixed on the floor. She believes that time will never come when she will enter the new house after it is allotted. Instead, she says, she might die before the allotment begins.
On hearing this, Begum’s youngest son, Mohammad Umar (32), got up to take a look at the houses, visible from a window in the room. “The DMRC has built them well, but they are too small for us. Also, we have no clue how they will be allotted—floor-wise as we have here?”
“This house is all we have,” said Begum, adding that she was shattered when she first learned about the forced relocation. However, she believes they will get justice from the courts.
Some 49 residents of Block 15 had approached the Delhi High Court nearly 18 months ago, demanding to know when alternative housing would be built for them if their homes were to be razed for the Metro. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for March 2019.
To many living in Block 15, the alternative housing being offered is cramped, like Mumbai’s chawls (large tenement houses). “The place looks like a chawl,” said Shabnam (42), who goes by her first name and is a resident of House No. 122 in Block 15. She will also be relocated due to the Metro construction. Her only worry about the relocation is that she might lose her only source of livelihood—a shop she has been running for the last three years in the ground floor of her house to raise her five children.
“We don’t know if a shop will be allotted to us or we will be compensated for its loss,” she added, seated on a wooden table in her shop, with her eldest daughter Zeba (22) standing next to her. “I was born here. It would not be easy for the whole family to relocate from a place the family built with so much hard work,” Zeba said.
In the lane behind Shabnam’s house, Ruby hasn’t painted the patched walls of her home for some years as the family will have to move out. “When a person shifts to another house of their own will, they do it happily. Otherwise, it is difficult,” Ruby said.
Last month, DMRC opened the section between Shiv Vihar and Trilokpuri on the Pink Line. The ‘U’ shaped line, running from Majlis Park to Shiv Vihar, will get completed when land issues involving relocation and rehabilitation at Trilokpuri and Hasanpur are resolved.
When asked about allotment of the homes, DMRC stated 66 housing units were completed.
Shamsuddin Azad, president of Block 15’s residents welfare association, said, “We are still looking at the allotments to be carried out by the DUSIB, instead of DMRC. This is because many would want freehold ownership of their houses in future.”