Blame it on the Delhi Police if tomorrow your maid, car cleaner, plumber and other house help don’t show up. The police are forcing daily-wagers and migrant labourers to leave in a drive to apparently ‘clean up’ the city for the Commonwealth Games.
The daily-wagers and labourers are being targeted i
n slums across the city by teams of Delhi Police, who are ‘deporting’ them, though no official written order exists. The affected workers allege policemen are rounding everyone without a valid Delhi address and identification proof and packing them off to railway stations. They are all being told not return before the end of the Games, on October 14.
“My wife and I have been told by the police we should be on our way to Purulia latest by Sunday otherwise they would take us to the railway station forcibly,” said Ashok Giri a mason living in South Delhi’s Rangpuri area.
Slumdwellers are now afraid they will be targeted at any time and have started keeping identification papers on their person. “I carry a copy of my ration card, PAN card and other documents. I’m repeatedly asked for my identification,” Sanjoy Roy, a mason from Rangpuri. “I’m being treated like a foreigner in my own country.”
Scared of being targeted by the police, several families have returned for their native places.
But they complain that without any work for nearly a month will hurt. “I do not know how I will sustain my family for the next 20 days. The police have just come and ordered us to leave,” said Sumit Singh, a house painter, living in Masoodpur.
A police officer involved in the operation said that in case a migrant is incapable of buying a train ticket, an ink stamp with the Delhi Police insignia is being marked on the arms before being packed off to the railway station. The stamp is used as identity for the ticket examiner, the officer, unwilling to be named, said. The railways have, however, denied any such stamp was being honoured.
The police have allegedly already packed off hundreds of unskilled and partially-skilled labourers. Senior officers though deny any one is being forcibly removed. “We are just asking people for their verification. If anyone is leaving, it is out of fear that they don’t have papers,” said one senior official.
Civil activists have taken up the cause. “The police cannot remove an Indian citizen just like that. They are threatening daily wage earners to get out of the city for almost 20 days,” said Moushumi Basu, secretary People’s Union for Democratic Rights.
The Peoples Union for Demo-cratic Rights had filed a PIL in the High Court in January regarding the low wages and deplorable working and living conditions of construction workers involved in CWG projects.