Regularisation of the national capital’s unauthorised colonies is an issue that raises its head from time to time, generally before an election, and it is then put on the backburner till the next electoral exercise comes along. Last week, however, the Centre grabbed the bull by its horns and got a bill passed in the Lok Sabha to grant ownership rights to about 4 million residents of 1,700-odd unauthorised colonies in Delhi.

The haste with which the Cabinet first cleared the proposal and then pushed through the legislation in the winter session of Parliament is indicative of the importance of the upcoming Assembly election in Delhi, slated for early 2020. For the BJP, which was restricted to just three of the 70 Assembly seats in the last election, it is a desperate bid to return to power in the national capital after a 20-year drought.

It faces a formidable rival in the Aam Aadmi Party, which has cemented its place in Delhi after five years of eventful rule, and is pulling out all the stops to make a comeback. The Congress, meanwhile, which was completely wiped out in 2015, is hoping to put up a reasonably good performance. In this scenario, the decision to grant ownership rights to residents of unauthorised colonies is obviously aimed at swaying the electorate, given that the colonies listed are all inhabited by economically backward migrants who had voted overwhelmingly for AAP in 2015, but surprisingly chose the BJP in the 2019 general election, perhaps to send a message to the Centre to legalise their status.

Both AAP and BJP are now taking credit for the move as well as indulging in a blame game. Union Urban Development Minister Hardeep Singh Puri accused the Arvind Kejriwal government of trying to delay the process by seeking time till 2021 to fix the boundaries of these colonies. On his part, the Delhi CM said the Centre’s legislation is based on a proposal sent by his government first in 2015 and then in July this year. He also questioned the delay in bringing the Bill which featured in the BJP’s 2014 manifesto.

Terming the Bill a fraud, Kejriwal asked why only 100 residents of unauthorised colonies would be given registration papers before the elections. To add to the confusion, the Congress claimed that 45 per cent of these colonies cannot be regularised as per a central notification because they are close to the Yamuna river bed or in the proximity of historical monuments. In the din and bustle of electioneering, the urban nightmare that the mushrooming of unauthorised colonies will lead to has been overlooked.

A Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee had submitted a report in July 2019 saying that regularisation of unauthorised colonies puts strain on the existing infrastructure and unplanned urbanisation adds to the environmental hazards. However, the Union government chose to ignore these observations. Capturing Delhi seems to be the single-minded determination of the ruling party at the Centre.