The Delhi Capital Development Authority (DDA) has set plans into motion to redevelop slums areas in the Capital City, and has appointed Ernst & Young as the transaction consultant to assist in managing the entire process. With the help of a consulting firm specialized in multi-dimensional projects, DDA hopes to address various rehabilitation schemes in a timely manner.

Overseeing these plans entails apprasing more than ten rehabilitation projects throughout the city of Delhi, emerging with feasible solutions within a six month timeframe. Ernst and Young have already begun the main projects which include developing new homes for the possessors of the JJ cluster in Ashok Vihar.

Ernst & Young will be focusing on ten key projects, alongside their associates, cumulating to around nineteen slums situated in different parts of the city, these are estimated to contain around 26438 families.

Based on The Indian Express’s information, Ernst and Young have assigned a meximum time duration of seven months to provide proper guidance and evaluation around the whole process.

Political Attention to Slums Area Rehabilitation

The rehabilitation of slums has always been a contested topic among all political parties during elections. Both the BJP and the Delhi government have shown interest towards the development of slum areas. After the elections, BJP’s Delhi state president, Virendra Sachdeva, personally engaged with residents of slum clusters to hear their needs and offer solutions.

Proposed Areas for Redevelopment

As part of the redevelopment plan, slum clusters like Dilshad Garden, Kalkaji, Shalimar Bagh, and Pitampura have been marked as focal areas. These three projects alone account for six slum clusters, which house over ten thousand families. According to the official figures provided by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, out of the 675 identified slum settlements in Delhi, 350 are deficient in basic infrastructure facilities located on DDA-controlled land.

Pledge Towards In-Situ Rehabilitation

In the meeting last November, where the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, VK Saxena, presided as chairperson, the DDA made some significant changes with respect to their slum rehabilitation policy. The first and foremost aim of these alterations is that all identified beneficiaries will be displaced from the area and socially relocated to the same area. The DDA claims that these policy revisions will make it possible to accommodate all of the beneficiaries at the locations where they currently reside, thus avoiding disruption of social or economic activities.

This is the first step in providing more slums dwellers in Delhi with improved housing and infrastructure to enhance their standard of living as this redevelopment scheme seeks to transform the dwellers’ living conditions and execute change without displacing them from their surroundings.