Life savings lost, we’ve nowhere to go: Latifpura residents in Jalandhar

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, December 10

Preeti Naik and her 10-year-old daughter Simran are yet to come to terms with losing their house and shop in a demolition drive, which continued for the second day today at Latifpura in Model Town amid tight security.

Exam tomorrow, no roof over head

We have lost everything. My mother has been crying since last night. Neither she ate anything nor did she sleep. My father is busy looking for a rented accommodation for us as I have my exam on Monday. Simran, 10-year-old Latifpura resident

Pointing towards the blue-coloured house, which was being reduced to ruins, the 10-year-old Simran with tears in her eyes, said: “We lost everything. My mother has been crying since last night. Neither she ate anything nor did she sleep. My father is busy looking for a rented accommodation for us as I have my exam on Monday”. She said though she didn’t know why all this happened with them, she heard people and her family blaming the government for all this.

“The police gave us very little time to remove or take our belongings. Though we managed to take our house stuff, we lost much of our shop stuff in the demolition drive. My husband had his car servicing shop here, and the scrap kept inside the shop and other material was razed off,” said Simran’s mother Preeti.

Like Preeti and Simran, there are many other families who have similar stories to share. The residents had spent last night at vacant-plot-cum-dumping zone, which is right infront of the demolition site. The plot is entirely covered with garbage and cowdung, and the residents are forced to keep their belongings and stay put here. “This is the plot where we used to leave our cattle for food and defecation, we never knew a day would come, when we had to live here,” they added.

“We have spent our lifetime’s savings on these houses. We have been living here even before the formation of the Jalandhar Improvement Trust. If this place was not in Model Town and some other old area of the city, the government would have never carried out demolition. The only reason why we have been rendered homeless is because the cost of this land is in hundreds of crores now,” said Harjinder Singh (65), who migrated here from Pakistan during partition.

He said the JIT didn’t serve any notice to them, and it was through media they got to know the Trust was planning to carry out demolition here. “We were hardly given two hours to vacate the house,” he said, adding that if administration or Trust had little concern where would we go or do after this demolition, they would have held a meeting with the residents and given a month-time at least, so that we could search for a rented accommodation.

Another resident Anil (41), a mechanic, said, “The government should have at least compensated us by offering a plot or house in any of its government schemes. Our life’s savings were invested in these houses, where should we go now. Our lives have been ruined”.

Distress on Human Rights Day

Hit by the demolition drive, residents say on one side the government is boosting of giving equal rights to its citizens, on the other, it is takig away their and their kids’ basic rights to standard living and education. “Our children will not be able to go school now as we can’t afford to pay their fees in this situation. Our businesses and houses have both been reduced to dust, and it will definitely take us a long time to get back on track,” they added.