Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena chaired a meeting to take stock of the progress and status of works related to regularization of unauthorized colonies and rehabilitation of slum dwellers under PM-UDAY and PMAY (Urban) respectively.

The L-G’s meeting with the Chief Secretary, ACS (UD), Principal Secretary (PWD), Vice-Chairman (DDA), Commissioner (MCD), and other senior officials of various stakeholder departments and agencies came following the passage of the NCTD Laws (Special Provisions) Act, 2023 by the Parliament recently.

During the meeting, Saxena, who had undertaken a comprehensive exercise to get the regularization and rehabilitation issues incorporated for permanent solution into the MPD-2041, asked the officers to give specific timelines with regards to complete implementation of PM-UDAY, PMAY and the Land Pooling Policy of the DDA, his office said on Monday.

“It was brought to the notice of the LG, that ambiguity in the boundaries of the unauthorized colonies, repeated extension of cut off dates and uncertainty in notified slum clusters had kept the issue hanging for long and this finally led the Centre to formulate the PM-UDAY and PMAY Schemes in 2019. However, immediately after that, with the COVID pandemic commencing, works could not be undertaken in full swing,” the LG office said.

The LG expressed surprise and concern at the fact that this Act, in different versions, had been in operation since December, 2006 and yet the matter remained hanging, notwithstanding the constraints caused by the pandemic, it said.

Saxena directed officials to come up with a concrete time-bound plan of action for registration, verification and subsequent regularization of the unauthorised colonies and stressed that the process of doing the same needed to be made simple and hassle-free.

He warned that no dereliction or corruption in this regard will be tolerated.

With regards to the rehabilitation of the slums, Saxena directed DDA to immediately identify alternate sites within a radius of km kms where in situ rehabilitation was not possible as per law and slum dwellers be rehabilitated to a dignified life in flats/houses that have already been constructed under various schemes, as per the L-G office.

The L-G instructed officials to ensure that the entire plan should be put into place within a month and concrete action should start immediately, it said.

He stressed that all tasks should be completed at least a year earlier than the outer limit of 2026, provided by the Act recently passed by the Parliament, it added.