Olga Tellis

analysis

Forced Evictions vis-à-vis Socio-Economic rights

PIL: A path for social justice

• Life is sustained through means which ensure a dignified existence.

• Slum dwellers are helpless victim of circumstances who deserves the compassion of the law.

• Slums are located at sites which provide opportunities to earn livelihood by doing odd jobs.

• Forced eviction will devoid them of any source of income.

• Humanitarian approach in expanding scope of right to life (art 21) to include second-generation rights of shelter and livelihood which gave a new socio-economic attribute to it.

• WHERE THERE IS A RIGHT THERE IS A REMEDY.

• PIL is the last resort for the oppressed for attaining social and economic justice.

• Protects the interests of marginalized/underprivileged groups who are at the receiving end of repression and absence of legal protection.

• PIL facilitates access to justice by relaxing rule of locus standi.

• Here, PIL used to combat exploitation and securing for the pavement dwellers their social and economic entitlements.

• However, the Court authorised the “eviction” but refused to legitimise “dishousing”.

Encroachers or city-makers?

• Role of slum dwellers:

(i) Build the city (construction workers)

(ii) Service providers (domestic workers)

(iii) Urban industrial production.

• Slum dwellers are city makers.

• The Court upheld the public purpose of pavement and directed Government to offer alternate accommodation to slum dwellers.

• India has ratified the UN Declaration on the Right to Development. Will rehabilitation really improve the well-being of the evicted?

• Right to City: "Collective right” of city dwellers to equal access to potential benefits of city so that they may fully realise their the civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights.

Judgment

Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corp.

• Right to life is inclusive of the right to livelihood and the right to housing.

• The procedure under S. 314 of BMC Act is not unreasonable as no person has right to encroach on footpaths reserved for public purpose by erecting structure on it.

• Government is liable to offer evicted slum dwellers alternative shelter.

(1985) 3 SCC 545

ABOUT THE CASE

Sumati Narayan

Olga Tellis

Vardarajan

M.F. Ali

Bombay Municipality

Chandrachud

Reddy

Tulzapurkar

WRIT PETITIONS u/a 32

Petitioners

Respondents

Pavement & Basti dwellers

• Migration for employment
• Proximity to place of work
• Dwellings: Plastic sheets & bamboos
• Demolition of Hutments in Basti
• Order of eviction by BMC without notice

ARGUMENTS

• Preventing encroachment for public purpose

• Nuisance

• Paucity of resources

• No fundamental right is violated as obstruction is removed.

Olga Tellis, Journalists, PUCL, CPDR

• Vicious circle:

Eviction

Unemployment

Deprivation of life

• Economic compulsion

• Lack of financial resources is inexcusable

• S. 314 is arbitrary

P. Angamuthu (pavement dweller), migrated from Salem, TN, with his family to Bombay in search of employment.

Works at Chemical Company on a daily wage of Rs. 23/day.

A slum-lord extorted Rs. 2,500 in exchange of a shelter of plastic sheets.

ISSUES

PIL Matter

I. Whether Bombay Government's order under S. 314 of the BMC Act regarding eviction and demolition of pavement dwellings and Basti hutments violates the right to life?

"All pavement dwellers in Bombay will be evicted forcibly and deported to their respective places of origin or removed to places outside Bombay"

II. Whether S. 314 of the BMC Act constitutionally valid?

A.R. Antulay

Actions in Bombay

"It is a very inhuman existence. These structures are flimsy and open to the elements. During the monsoon there is no way these people can live comfortably."

S. 314 of BMC Act, 1888

Municipal Commissioner is empowered to remove without notice any encroachment on foothpath.

CESCR General Comment No. 4 on art 11(1)

Right to housing is a judicially derived right in India.