Housing and Land Rights Network- India is pleased to announce the launch of a new report –
Forced Evictions in India in 2020: A Grave Human Rights Crisis During the Pandemic.
The report reveals that during the COVID-19 pandemic, from March 2020 to July 2021, the Indian government demolished, at a minimum, over 43,600 homes and forcibly evicted over a quarter million people (257,000) across urban and rural India. This implies that 21 people were evicted from their homes every hour during the pandemic. In the year 2020, over 173,300 people lost their homes as a result of direct state action. Currently, nearly 16 million people across India live under the threat of eviction.
Even though secure housing is considered to be a strong defence against the deadly coronavirus, state authorities have continued to demolish homes of the rural and urban poor, thereby severely risking their health and lives. Our report draws attention to the grave human rights and humanitarian crisis of forced evictions across India, while proposing urgent recommendations to the government.
Read the press release
Download the full report
Photo: Eviction scene from the report. Source: HLRN-India.
