New Delhi, July 5

Homeless doesn’t stay however merely exist and life as envisaged by Article 21 of the Constitution is unknown to them, noticed the Delhi High Court which directed the relocation of 5 individuals who had been shifted from one slum web site to a different on the time of the growth of the New Delhi Railway Station.

Justice C Hari Shankar, whereas coping with a petition filed by 5 slum dwellers in 2008 in opposition to their eviction even from the second web site on account of additional modernisation for the railway station, noticed that the slum dwellers are “hounded by poverty and penury” and don’t stay there out of alternative.

The court docket mentioned their place of residence is a “last-ditch effort” to safe for themselves the best to life underneath Article 21 regarding the best to shelter and a roof over their heads.

The choose mentioned that regulation is price tinsel if the underprivileged can’t get justice and the judiciary is required to stay delicate to the decision of Articles 38 and 39 which obligate the State to safe social, financial, and political justice for all and to try to minimise inequalities from the society.

“The homeless, who people the pavements, the footpaths, and those inaccessible nooks and crannies of the city from where the teeming multitude prefer to avert their eyes, live on the fringes of existence. Indeed, they do not live, but merely exist; for life, with its myriad complexions and contours, envisaged by Article 21 of our Constitution, is unknown to them,” mentioned the court docket in its order dated July 4.

“Even a bare attempt at imagining how they live is, for us, peering out from our gilt-edged cocoons, cathartic. And so we prefer not to do so; as a result, these denizens of the dark continue to eke out their existence, not day by day, but often hour by hour, if not minute by minute,” the court docket said.

The court docket mentioned that if the petitioners can exhibit to the authorities that earlier than shifting to the second slum colony on the Lahori Gate aspect in 2003, they lived within the authentic slum colony i.e. Shahid Basti jhuggi in Nabi Karim from a date previous to November 30, 1998, they might be entitled to an alternate lodging underneath the Relocation Policy of the Ministry of Urban Development.

The petitioners could be allotted various lodging in accordance with the Relocation Policy as expeditiously as doable and never later than six months from the date of manufacturing of the requisite paperwork earlier than the Railways, the court docket said.

In its 32-page order, the court docket asserted that the judiciary is required to stay delicate to the decision of the Constitution which obligates the State to safe the aim of justice and try to minimise inequalities in revenue, standing, amenities, alternatives and rejected the respondent’s stand that underneath the Relocation Policy, relocation is offered for less than these slums which had been in existence previous to November 30, 1998.

 “Jhuggi dwellers represent a shifting, nomadic, populace… Hounded by poverty and penury, they have no option but to comply (when shifted elsewhere). Slum-dwellers do not stay in slums out of choice. Their choice of residence is the last ditch effort at securing, for themselves, what the Constitution regards as an inalienable adjunct to the right to life under Article 21, viz. the right to shelter and a roof over their heads. As to whether the roof provides any shelter at all is, of course, another matter altogether,” the court docket noticed.

The court docket mentioned that helpful statutes and schemes should be broadly and liberally interpreted to maximise their scope and impact and that “Law is but the instrument, the via media, as it were, to attain the ultimate goal of justice, and law which cannot aspire to justice is, therefore, not worth administering.”

“Law, with all its legalese, is worth tinsel if the underprivileged cannot get justice. At the end of the day, our preambular goal is not law, but justice,” it added.