Maharashtra monitoring committee team visits Delhi’s night shelters

The Maharashtra team visited multiple night shelters in Delhi to understand the vision, structure, operation and maintenance of night shelters made by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB)

The Supreme Court-appointed State Level Shelter Monitoring Committee for Urban Homelessness from Maharashtra visited night shelters and shelter homes in Delhi to understand the vision, structure, operation and maintenance of night shelters made by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), the Delhi government’s slums management agency.

Delhi caters to around 17,000 homeless people through a network of 195 shelters. (Video grab/ DUSIB)

DUSIB in a statement on Saturday said the Maharashtra team visited multiple shelters to get an experience of the services being offered by DUSIB and praised their services.

Retired Maharashtra bureaucrat Ujjwal Uke, who led the delegation, said he will urge the Maharashtra government to consider replicating the Delhi model of porta cabin based night shelters, because of the serious space constraint in Mumbai.

DUSIB chief executive officer (CEO) K Mahesh said, “Delhi has one of the world’s highest number of shelter homes, and we support Maharashtra SLSMC and NULM in their efforts to better implement the scheme for Urban homeless shelters.”

There are 12 shelters in Mumbai, catering to 300-350 people in need, and 76 shelters in Maharashtra, catering to around 2,000 homeless people. In contrast to that, Delhi caters to around 17,000 homeless people through a network of 195 shelters, a data point which grows to around 23,000 homeless people being catered through an additional 150 tent-based shelters in the harsh winters of Delhi, a DUSIB official said.