New Delhi, June 1 (IANS) With the opposition AAP and the Congress crying foul over a slum demolition in the national capital’s Jangpura area, Delhi unit BJP President Virendra Sachdeva said the action was taken on court order.

He said that the relocation of slum dwellers from the Barapullah Madrasi Camp near Jangpura to flats in Narela is not a routine administrative removal of a slum settlement, but is based on a Delhi High Court order concerning the removal of slums built over a drain.

Sachdeva said that the BJP still stands by its policy of “jahan jhuggi wahin makan”, but the slum settlement of the Madrasi Camp on the Barapullah drain had, for years, prevented proper cleaning of the drain. This had become a major cause of waterlogging in several kilometres of the surrounding area during the monsoon.

The order to remove the Barapullah Madrasi Camp was issued during the rule of the Aam Aadmi Party through the Public Works Department, he said.

The residents had challenged this order but the High Court rejected their plea and, prioritising the cleaning of the Barapullah drain, issued a removal order for June 1.

Sachdeva expressed regret that the same AAP leaders who had earlier issued removal orders through the PWD were now trying to provoke slum residents.

“It is the BJP government’s sensitive and humane policy that, although the Delhi High Court ordered the removal of the Barapullah Madrasi Camp on June 1, our government provided them with alternative flats and a better life instead of simply displacing them,” said Sachdeva.

The Delhi BJP President said that rather than indulging in hollow statements, AAP leaders should answer why their government never provided better rehabilitation to a single slum community, even though they consistently treated slum dwellers as vote banks based on Assembly constituencies.

–IANS

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