Click to play videoNew Delhi: It’s a battle for survival that has been fought for decades in Delhi’s 300-year-old Nangal Dewat village as the expansion plan for the Delhi airport requires the uprooting of this village.
Now villagers have fought back seeking proper rehabilitation, but authorities are not prepared to wait even as the case is in court.
For villagers like Ram Narayan, who have owned land in this area for generations, it is been a tough task explaining his plight to the authorities.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) acquired Narayan’s land in 1972 and with the Commonwealth games round the corner Ram Narayan's time is finally running out.
"They are offering Rs 40,000 for one acre of land. With that, you can't even lay the foundation in the rehabilitation site,” says Narayan.
At current market rates, the price of his land would be about Rs 4-5 lakh per square yard but the Government is offering him Rs 24 per square yard. It's the price that was fixed in 1972, when the land was first acquired.
However, there are many who are not even getting Rs 24 for their square yard of land like Ram Meher who is one of the 122 Dalits who will get nothing.
“Where would we go? They don't let us live on footpaths anymore?” says Meher.
The villagers of Nangal Dewat even went to the High Court seeking proper rehabilitation and compensation. The court then issued a stay order but the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) took no note of the order.
DDA instead told the villagers to vacate the village in 24 hours or else they would lose whatever little compensation they were entitled to.
"We will die anyway. Let them kill us and continue with their development,” laments a farmer, Gajendra Choudhury.
And that was not all, now sewage from the nearby Centaur hotel is directed towards the village while barbed wires all along the village border have been put up by DIAL.
A school in the village, established in 1957, has also been served a notice to shift to an undefined alternate site. A local bank has also been asked to move out and a new patch of land in Rangpuri is the new site for its relocation.
No schools, no banks and not even land for everybody. With 30 years to get its act together, this is what Government authorities call rehabilitation at an advanced stage.
Nangal Dewat, which is spread over 713 bighas, now has to somehow fit into the 301 bighas that the DDA is offering.
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