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BJP govt needs to prioritise migrant housing, waste management: Ex-Delhi chief secretary

New Delhi, Jul 3 (PTI) Former Delhi chief secretary Shailaja Chandra has called on the BJP-led dispensation to urgently prioritise migrant housing, waste management and inter-agency coordination to tackle issues of urban governance. In an interview with PTI, 81-year-old Chandra, who has also served as secretary in the Union Ministry of Health, said the unplanned settlement of migrant workers remains Delhi's most pressing challenge. "Migrants will keep coming for work. They need water, electricity and housing. The government cannot provide it all but it also cannot let people settle wherever they like on public land without roads or drains," she said. Chandra, in an open letter in The Indian Express, urged Chief Minister Rekha Gupta to show political courage and abandon decades of "appeasement politics" in favour of long-term urban planning. In the piece, she also congratulated Gupta on assuming charge of what she referred to as "India's most demanding urban assignment". Talking to PTI, she highlighted a longstanding mismatch between zoning regulations of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the on-ground situation, and stressed the need for a comprehensive urban housing plan that prevents the creation of new unauthorised colonies. "Public land is the easiest to encroach upon because it is not protected. The city's carrying capacity is being broken every day. So that has to be somehow taken charge of because whatever has happened, rather than undoing that, which can go on slowly, at least prevent new things from happening," she noted. In the national capital, multiplicity of agencies also poses a challenge, she observed and suggested breaking the silos among multiple civic and planning agencies. "Delhi has a DDA, MCD, PWD, land and building department, revenue department, police - all working but in silos. But accountability is missing," she said. Chandra said there should be solid waste management, which is something one can learn from Indore. "Indore has no 'dhalaos', no landfill mountains. Waste is picked up from households in six different bags by the municipal corporation itself - not outsourced contractors," she said. Explaining how there are heavy penalties for non-segregation and public accountability in sanitation in Indore, she suggested replicating the same here as well. "The entire system in Indore - from segregation to CNG production from waste - runs smoothly because the political and bureaucratic leadership worked together," she said. Asked about Delhi's new woman Chief Minister, Rekha Gupta, Chandra said women leaders often bring a strong sense of housekeeping and attention to detail. She recalled how former chief minister Sheila Dikshit once asked her to prioritise appointing a good housekeeper for the Delhi Secretariat during their first meeting. "The story only elaborates that you can't always choose a woman chief minister and plant a woman chief minister. But women do have a certain knack of observation of looking for cleanliness, neatness, orderliness which helps," she said. Chandra, who also served on the Yamuna Monitoring Committee (YMC) set up by the National Green Tribunal, recalled how inter-agency conflicts hamper even basic environmental tasks. "So, 14 out of those 16 are in Delhi, right? Those 14, we used to call them, and over one drain, the meeting would go on for one-and-a-half hours, because each one would say, that one is from the Railways, that one is from Defence. "To try and bring that to a head and give an order which will work, meant looking at maps, asking architects and engineers from outside to guide us. That is why I am saying that micromanagement will have to be done," she said, while stressing the need to have technocrats. She said there is probably very little accountability, at least in the 10 years that she had seen. "The last 10 years, no accountability at all. So that is something which has to be instilled," Chandra said. With all three levels of government -- Centre, state and local -- under one political party, she said this is a golden opportunity to effect changes. In the open letter to the chief minister, Chandra said she had no political agenda and was not seeking an advisory role -- only a response from the chief minister to what she described as a "moment of reckoning". "You can interrupt the decay or you can inherit its failed logic. Delhi deserves courage, not administrative tinkering," she wrote. Chandra also said the chief minister has a rare opportunity to break with the past and outshine even Delhi's most enduring and popular chief minister, the late Sheila Dikshit, especially with the backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Manohar Lal Khattar. In the letter, the former bureaucrat accused successive governments of choosing vote-bank politics over planning, turning Delhi's migrant influx into a "politics of patronage". She highlighted the violation of planning and environment norms in legitimising temporary shelter through free utilities and retroactive regularisation. "Seven million people live in unauthorised colonies. Effluent from industries using carcinogens is discharged into stormwater drains. The Yamuna is choking. And yet, the politics of appeasement continues," she wrote. Blaming the continued erosion of urban planning on ad hoc policy, judicial verdict reversals and legislative actions that allowed large-scale encroachment of public and agricultural land, she called for an "end to endless retrofitting". While asking the chief minister to set a limit on further regularisation of illegal colonies and publicly declare that no further encroachments would be legitimised, she suggested using all available enforcement tools with proper coordination with the state administrative machinery. Chandra also recommended the creation of "migration-responsive" housing near employment hubs. Further, she called for temporary structures for new migrants and distribution of services based on need, not political convenience. PTI SLB SLB KSS KSS

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