TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ Slamming the anti-encroachment drive being carried out in various parts of the city, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said if bulldozers raze shops and houses of 63 lakh people in Delhi, which are considered illegal, it will be the “biggest destruction” in independent India.
At a meeting with Aam Aadmi Party MLAs on the matter, Kejriwal told them they should be ready to go to jail for opposing the anti-encroachment drive being carried out by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led municipal corporations in various parts of Delhi. “They are reaching colonies with bulldozers and razing any shop and house. Even if people show them papers to prove that the structure is not illegal, they do not check them,” he said.
“Delhi has not been made in a planned way. More than 80 per cent of Delhi can be called illegal and encroached. Does that mean you will destroy 80 per cent of Delhi?” he said in an online briefing. The party is against the way the anti-encroachment drive is being carried out, he said, adding that nearly 50 lakh people stay in unauthorised colonies, 10 lakh in ‘jhuggis’ and there are lakhs of people who have modified balconies or done something that does not conform to original maps.