Uttarakhand brings new slum policy

The move comes right before the upcoming Assembly polls.

The Uttarakhand Cabinet on Tuesday approved a slum policy promising new homes for nearly 750,000 people living in 582 slum clusters across the hill state.

The approval came at a meeting of the state Cabinet presided over by chief minister B C Khanduri here. The government would provide a new constructed house or a plot to each family residing in the slum areas.

However, the policy did not specify whether these slum areas would be regularised or not. A working formula is yet to be prepared in this regard, principal secretary urban development Ranbir Singh said.

The move is also being seen as the ruling BJP’s attempt to garner more support among the urban poor ahead of the Assembly elections in February.

Under the policy, the government would provide an identity card to each individual living in the slums and provide an 800 sq feet plot or a 300 sq feet constructed house on subsidised rates on 10 years lease to each of the family. After the expiry of the lease, the owners will have the option to free hold the property for sale. A separate master plan will be prepared specifically catering to each district as well as the slum cluster.

The government has also made it mandatory for private developers and the government agencies to reserve 25 per cent of the houses for urban poor in order to check further encroachments.

This also means that the government would not allow any further slums to be set up in any area.

In future, new houses which will come up in the state having more than 500 sq yards area, will have a servant quarter also.

Similarly, the houses constructed on more than 1,000 sq yards will have two servant quarters. "These provisions are being made in order to check further spread of slum clusters," Singh said.