New Delhi: 40-year-old rickshaw driver Mukesh Sahu, a native of Odisha, is forced to spend the night in the corridors of the markets of Fatehpuri and Chandni Chowk in the scorching cold of Delhi. He often bakes bonfires to get relief from the cold, but he cannot stay in the nearby night shelter due to paucity of space.
Sahu said, “Earlier, I used to sleep in the night shelter located in Chandni Chowk, but due to the necessity of following the rules of social distance since last winter, I could not get a place there.”
Like Sahu, thousands of other homeless people in Delhi are forced to spend cold nights on footpaths, bus stands and subways under bridges, battling the severe winter. Ahmed Ali, a daily wage laborer from Samastipur in Bihar, says, “I am afraid of sleeping on the pavement due to the cold winds. The shelters are either short of space or are in poor condition, so I spend the night under a bridge at Kashmere Gate.”
According to a government survey conducted in 2014, there are more than 16,000 homeless people in Delhi, but NGOs working for the homeless claim that the number could be closer to one lakh.
Government officials say that adequate arrangements have been made for the homeless to stay. An official of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, on the condition of anonymity, told PTI that there are 209 permanent and 216 temporary shelter homes in the national capital, which can accommodate 21,000 homeless people, but due to the COVID-19 Due to this the living capacity of the people has been revised to around 10,500.
Sunil Kumar Alediya, executive director of the Center for Holistic Development, said thousands of people are forced to spend the night on the streets due to lack of space and facilities in shelter homes.