Bulldozers roll into Delhi's Madrasi Camp: AAP slams BJP as hundreds lose homes
New Delhi, June 1 (PTI): A political storm erupted in the capital on Sunday after bulldozers razed large parts of the Madrasi Camp slum cluster near Barapullah in South Delhi, displacing hundreds of working-class families.
The demolition, carried out following a Delhi High Court order, has drawn sharp criticism from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders, who accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Delhi administration of betrayal and insensitivity.
Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, Atishi, took to social media platform X to condemn the move. "Before the elections, BJP leaders came to stay in Madrasi Camp. They got the people to fill out the 'Jahan jhuggi, wahin makaan' forms. As soon as the BJP government came, they bulldozed these slums. Only a handful of people were given houses, that too in Narela. Most of the people have come on the streets. This is the truth of BJP," she posted.
Echoing similar sentiments, AAP's Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj criticized the timing of the demolition. "Yesterday the Chief Minister of Delhi said that no slum will be demolished. Today itself the Barpulla Madrasi Camp was destroyed by bulldozers. Thousands of people were deprived of their homes. Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin must expose how BJP treats people of Tamil Nadu in the national capital," he wrote on X.
AAP MLA Praveen Kumar also shared a video statement on social media, accusing the administration of carrying out "barbaric activities."
"Houses of people who had been living there for 50 years were demolished. What did not happen in the Arvind Kejriwal government is now happening in Delhi under Rekha Gupta's government," he said.
Approximately 370 families resided in the Madrasi Camp, a jhuggi cluster that has existed for nearly 60 years along the banks of the Barapullah drain near Nizamuddin Railway Station. Last month, residents were served eviction notices, and authorities identified only 189 families as eligible for relocation to government flats in Narela.
A government notice dated May 30 informed residents that trucks would be available at Barapullah Bridge from May 31 to June 1 to assist in shifting their belongings.
The Tamil Nadu government, responding to the situation, acknowledged the demolition was being conducted in compliance with a court directive and that all legal options had been exhausted. It added that assistance would be provided to any residents from Tamil Nadu who wished to return to their native districts.
चुनाव से पहले भाजपा के नेता मद्रासी कैम्प में प्रवास करने आए। ‘जहाँ झुग्गी, वहीं मकान’ के फॉर्म भरवा के गए।
— Atishi (@AtishiAAP) June 1, 2025
जैसे ही भाजपा की सरकार आई, इन झुग्गियों पर बुलडोज़र चला दिया।मुट्ठी -भर लोगों को मकान दिया, वो भी नरेला में। ज़्यादातर लोग सड़क पर आ गए हैं।
ये है भाजपा की सच्चाई… https://t.co/jFmwtsCPrB
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Kamala Harris claims she 'had a certain responsibility' to argue against Biden running again
Washington: Former US Vice President Kamala Harris said on Monday evening that she regrets not expressing her concerns about then-President Joe Biden running for a second term when a majority of Americans felt he was too old for the job.
"I have and had a certain responsibility that I should have followed through on," Harris told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC in her first live television interview since the election.
Such a conversation, even if it happened privately and behind the scenes, would have been an extraordinary breach in a relationship between a president and vice president.
Harris' comments expand on a passage in her book, "107 Days," that looks back on her experience replacing Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee after he dropped out of the race. Harris ultimately lost to Republican candidate Donald Trump.
In the book, Harris wrote that everyone in the White House would say “it's Joe and Jill's decision” about running for reelection, referring to the president and first lady. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” she wrote.
“The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”
In her interview with Maddow, Harris said, "when I talk about the recklessness, as much as anything, I'm talking about myself.”
Harris said in the interview she was concerned that “it would come off as completely self-serving” if she had counseled Biden not to seek reelection. She had competed against him for their party's 2020 nomination, and she was well positioned to run again.
A representative for Biden declined comment.
