GURGAON: A group of 200 families living in slum clusters in Sector 12A face eviction following a Punjab and Haryana high court order but the authorities are yet to come up with a plan to provide them alternative housing. The residents have sought the intervention of the Haryana Human Rights Commission (HRC) to ensure they have a roof over their heads.

The HRC has written to Gurgaon deputy commissioner Shekhar Vidyarthi seeking his response. The hearing is on March 14.

Slum-dwellers near Raj cinema hall on Old Delhi Road said since they have been asked to leave their present homes, they should be privded new living space under the government jousing scheme for economically backward sections of society.

The HUDA notice asked them to vacate their houses by February 7, failing which an evacuation would be carried out using police force. The eviction order passed by the Punjab and Haryana high court, being executed by HUDA, was served in response to a petition filed by the market association of shopkeepers in the area.

“We have been staying here for the past 30 years, much before the market sprang up. They want to throw us out in a few days,” said Asha, a septuagenarian, whose son weaves carpets operating out of a small shanty. Asked about the Ashiana scheme, Vidyarthi said “that pertains to HUDA”.

HUDA administrator PC Meena said: “We will comply with the high court order in letter and spirit. Shopkeepers have been assured that the dwellers will be shifted and some of them (dwellers) have already been shifted.”

Following the court order last month, slum dwellers approached the state human rights commission to push the administration into action and accommodate them in the flats that have been complete for nearly three years. “Chief Minister, local MLA, area MP and HUDA administrator had organized a grand inauguration of these flats nearly three years ago. But till date, not a single homeless person has been accommodated,” said Raman Sharma, an activist who filed the complaint in the state human rights commission on behalf of the slum dwellers.

As per a rough estimate, there are nearly 50,000 such slum dwellers sparsely located in areas including Sector 12A, 56, 47, 46, 47-51 road, Basai, Kadipur, and near BSF camp. These people have been staying here for several years, some for as long as three decades.”Though the administration is in its right to evacuate at any point of time but when the flats have been made to house the homeless people in the city and all surveys have been done, we have submitted our documents and the BPL cards, then why do they want to first evacuate us and make us homeless,” asks Dharmender, who stays in his shanty in sector 12A with five children, sick father and old mother.

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