NEW DELHI: Over 1 lakh people were evicted and over 22,000 houses demolished across the rural and urban areas of the country during 2019, according to a Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) report released on Tuesday. However, these are only conservative estimates, pointed out the report.1

The sites of eviction amid the COVID-19 outbreak include Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Telangana, Manipur, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Haryana, and Delhi, the report ‘Forced evictions in India in 2019: An Unrelenting National Crisis’ documented.

A significant number of the at least 4.6 lakh people evicted during the years 2017 and 2018 were not resettled by 2019 by the government and continued to live in inadequate conditions marked by high insecurity, lack of access to basic services, and fear, according to the report.

The report raised concerns on why settlements were demolished as the lands were not used for any other purpose following the evictions.

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• 1. During the pandemic alone, there were at least 45 incidents of evictions and at least 20,000 people were evicted, the HLRN report said.