Cong promises law on right to housing for slum dwellers

Congress today sought to retrieve lost ground in poll-bound Delhi by promising an ambitious law providing right to housing for millions of slum dwellers in the national capital.
The Draft of the NCT of Delhi Right to Housing, Shelter and Property (Rights) to Slum dwellers Bill, 2015, was released by party leaders as part II of the Congress manifesto which was out last week.
Party General Secretary Ajay Maken, who is the face of the party in Delhi, told reporters that the purpose of the bill is to ensure housing, shelter and property rights to all citizens of Delhi living in slums.

Maken, who was flanked by Delhi PCC Chief Arvinder Singh Lovely and senior leader P C Chacko, who looks after party affairs in Delhi, said that every housing unit under under the proposal would have a carpet area of more than 25 sq metres and upto 40 sq metres.
He said it will include the provision of granting property rights through a "legal document of entitlement" giving freehold rights to all slum dwellers.
Delhi's population is around 1.7 crore and more than 25 per cent of it lives in slums.

The Congress announcement came a day after Rahul Gandhi's road show here.

Congress has fallen on bad days since the last Assembly polls held less than two years back in which the party not only lost its 15-year hold over power but was relegated to the third position.
The emergence of AAP, led by Arvind Kejriwal, made deep inroads into the Congress votebank in the slums in the 2013 polls.