Most of state’s urban slums on private lands
While Andhra Pradesh has the second largest slum population in the country after Maharashtra.
Hyderabad: While Andhra Pradesh has the second largest slum population in the country after Maharashtra, government surveys show that about 60 per cent of urban slums in the state are located on privately owned land.
Interestingly, the National Sample Survey Office report states that half of these slums have been recognised by the government as “notified” slums despite them being located on privately owned lands.
According to the NSSO, notified slums are “areas notified as slums by the concerned state governments, municipalities, corporations, local bodies or development authorities”.
The NSSO report states that 60 per cent of all urban slums, both notified and non-notified, in the state are on private lands while about 58.7 per cent of “notified” slums are located on privately-owned lands.
Officials, however, say that legislations allow for the government to notify slums even if they are located on private lands. Different states have different definitions of notified slums. The Andhra Pradesh Slum Improvement (Acquisition of Land) Act empowers the government to notify “any” land as “slum area” when it is satisfied that the area is a source of danger to public health, safety by reason of being low lying, insanitary or squalid.
“The notification of slums is basically under the Slum Improvement Act. There are two stages of notification, preliminary and final. So even it is a privately owned land, the government can notify it. The person will always try to vacate and such areas are always stuck in litigation,” a senior official of the Revenue department said.
“It is still a difficult issue. Many such cases are pending in land grabbing and other courts,” the official added. The NSSO report also added that only about 40 per cent of the urban slums benefitted from projects like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in the state.
However, the state is now trying to bring in legislation to cover such projects. “The Act is still in draft form. Till now all these projects were only Government Orders but with this Act, they will be covered under law,” a senior government official said.