On Wednesday, 6th September 2023, the Press Information Bureau bunked the claims made by a CNN report which said that the government authorities in Delhi have left thousands of people in the city homeless after the demolition drive executed in the capital days before the G20 Summit. PIB has said that the encroachment removal drives in Delhi are in compliance with orders passed by the Supreme Court.
PIB also added that the eviction is not linked with the G20 Summit and the place where it is happening is not near the summit meeting venue.
In a post on social media platform X, PIB wrote, “CNN has made misleading claims regarding clearing encroachments in Delhi ahead of G20 Summit. Removal of encroachments is in compliance with orders passed by the Supreme Court. Demolition of structures at Tughlaqabad is unrelated to G20 & not near the venue.”
.@CNN has made #Misleading claim regarding clearing encroachments in Delhi ahead of #G20 Summit#PIBFactCheck
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) September 6, 2023
▶️ Removal of encroachments are in compliance with orders passed by Supreme Court
▶️ Demolition of structures at Tughlaqabad is unrelated to G20 & not near the venue pic.twitter.com/zGQ1jmlpxk
On 5th September 2023, CNN published a report by Rhea Mogul, Vedika Sud, and Sania Farooqui. The report is titled, “India, advocate for the global poor, clears slums as G20 draw near”. The report claims that the encroachment removal drive in Delhi is being executed in order to make the capital city presentable in front of foreign guests attending the upcoming G20 summit.
The CNN report claimed that “tens of thousands of New Delhi’s most marginalized residents have been evicted from their homes in the lead up to the G20 meeting, as authorities embark on a mass demolition drive in neighbourhoods across the city”. It adds that slums near Pragati Maidan – the venue of the G20 Summit – are also being removed.
While it is true that a small number of illegal houses were demolished near Pragati Maidan as per High Court orders, it was around 50 houses and no tens of thousands of residents. The bulk of the evictions are taking place around 15-20 km to the south, where a significant number of areas of encroached land have been recovered by demolishing illegal houses.
On August 26, 2023, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) undertook the demolition of approximately 150 houses situated in an illegally occupied slum within Badarpur village. Over the past year, similar demolition operations have been conducted in various other locations, including Tughlaqabad, Vishwas Nagar, Zakir Nagar, and Sanjay Gandhi camp. These areas are near the Delhi-Haryana border, far away from Lutyens Delhi where the G20 summit meeting is taking place.
The G20 Summit is held annually under a rotating presidency, which currently rests with India for 2023. The group does not have a permanent secretariat and is supported by the previous, current, and future holders of the presidency, known as the troika. In 2023, the troika consists of Indonesia, Brazil, and India. Indonesia President Joko Widodo handed over the G20 Presidency to India at the closing ceremony of the 17th intergovernmental summit in Bali in November 2022.
India officially assumed the G20 presidency on December 1, 2022, and since then it has been hosting meetings in cities including Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Guwahati, Indore, Jodhpur, Khajuraho, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Pune, Rann of Kutch, Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, and Udaipur.
The New Delhi G20 Summit, which will bring an end to a series of meetings over the course of the year, is going to be held in New Delhi on 9-10 September this year. The 43 Heads of Delegations- the largest ever in G20-will be participating in the final G20 Summit.
