400 houses recently demolished at Israil Camp in Vasant Kunj leaving around 2000 people homeless.  Detailed and disturbing article below.  Israil Camp is in Vasant Kunj, where South Delhi meets the Ridge. The area has the semi-urbanised feel of Delhi’s southern edges where the city seems to come apart at its fringes.  High end developments like the Ambience Mall, also on Ridge Land, are interspersed with medical institutions, plant nurseries and small clusters of shops.  Israil Camp has been under threat from the DDA since 2000 but a Supreme Court order had partly legalised the settlement.  The land comes under the Forest Department and no notice was given for the demolitions.  The Forest Department has no provision for resettlement and the only person said to have responsibility for the many people now homeless is the BJP MLA, implicated in the demolitions.  Not only peoples houses and possessions were destroyed but important documents such as PDS and voter ID cards are also lost in the rubble.  Neha Dixit’s article on the link below has a fuller story…  http://scroll.in/article/692011/A-shanty-town-in-South-Delhi-pays-a-high-price-for-resisting-communal-polarisation

UN Guidelines on Development Related Displacement:

Click to access Guidelines_en.pdf

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/ForcedEvictions.aspx