The Delhi government plans to demolish 33 slums this October, yet there is no plan in place to rehabilitate more than half of the displaced residents when the bulldozers roll in, the Times of India reports.

Around 58 percent of the slum residents still need to provide proper documentation to prove they have lived in Delhi long enough to qualify for rehousing, or they will be left to fend for themselves, the paper said.

Urban development minister Raj Kumar Chauhan announced that the process for removing 33 slums out of the 212 under the purview of the state, Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board and MCD is likely to begin in October, according to TOI. 

The state government found 15,713 shanties in the city's slum clusters. Applications from residents as per the eligibility criteria for low-income housing were sought, but only 10,017 people applied and only 42 percent of them were found eligible, the paper said. 

The paper quoted Chauhan as saying that all slums to be relocated will be given 45 days notice prior to the demolition. Residents will be given a chance to submit documents to make it to the eligibility list. "We will accept documents till two days before a slum cluster is demolished. Those who do not meet the criteria or cannot furnish the documents will have to fend for themselves and look for alternatives," Chauhan said, making it clear that the government has no relief plan for them. 

Some things never change.  Check out my article from the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review — Delhi's war on the poor — to understand just how grim the situation is for slum dwellers.  Gangsters help them to squat illegally on government land while local construction projects are underway, and the poor spend their paltry savings to improve drainage, run electricity and water lines, and so forth — and then as soon as they've made the land "desirable" through their efforts, along come the bulldozers.

As I wrote then:

This is painfully evident in Rohini, a remote district in Delhi's northern hinterland where the Kirti Nagar slum dwellers have been forced to resettle. Under the noonday sun, families gather under a canopy, clamouring for emergency micro-loans provided by the charity Indcare. Stretched out over the seven-hectare resettlement area are more than 1,000 shanties built from materials salvaged from the demolition site. One family has heaped together a home from two doors, four corrugated-metal sheets and a now-useless refrigerator–in Kirti Nagar they had power, but Rohini Sector 27 is not connected to the electricity grid. Another family has built a shelter entirely from corrugated metal roofing. In a heat wave that pushes the temperature to 48 degrees Celsius, their home is an oven.

"I lost a house and belongings worth more than 80,000 rupees!" says Bimla Devi, a soft-spoken widow in her 60s who lived in Kirti Nagar for 12 years. A domestic servant and mother of two boys, Devi put almost every rupee she earned into her house. Her small family had slowly pulled itself up: One son ran a successful tea stall and the other had a good job in a factory. Everything they gave back to their mother was razed in under an hour. In return, she received a patch of barren earth in Rohini and a bill for 7,000 rupees.

Evicted slum dwellers receive no compensation for the loss of their homes and possessions–an investment of as much as 50,000 rupees over years for families who earn just 2,000 rupees a month–or aid to build a new home. They simply have to start again from scratch. On one plot, a displaced shop owner has already put together an open-air barber's shop–two chairs in front of a mirror and a battered wooden cabinet.