- Bulldozer drives between December 2022 and February 2026 demolished hundreds of houses across Ranchi, displacing vulnerable families without immediate rehabilitation.
- Many residents claim they bought land legally or lived there for decades, while authorities say demolitions followed court orders to clear government and tribal land.
- Political leaders and observers highlight land broker exploitation, administrative lapses, and the urgent need for rehabilitation and accountability.
The roof of Ram Lakhan Yadav’s house, the very roof where a wedding canopy was meant to rise for his daughter, now lies in rubble. He never imagined that trouble would come crashing down on him like this.
Seventy-year-old Ram Lakhan breaks down whenever anyone asks how he is coping. He was sifting through the debris of his demolished home when he spoke. “My daughter is getting married on 25 February. There are barely two weeks left. They brought my house down with a bulldozer. How am I supposed to arrange the wedding now? Where will I hold it? I married off three of my daughters from this very house.”
In Shiv Durga Temple Lane in Madhukam Khadakhada, Ranchi, thirteen families who had lived for nearly four decades on land described as tribal were rendered homeless in a single sweep. Ram Lakhan’s home was one of them.
Acting on court orders to clear what it termed illegal encroachments, the district administration launched a demolition drive on Wednesday. At around 9 a.m. on 10 February, officials arrived with police and bulldozers, ordering residents to vacate. When some hesitated, the machines advanced. There were protests, folded hands, pleas for time, and people wept as their homes collapsed. The bulldozers did not stop.
Ram Lakhan alleges that he and the other families were cheated by Mahadev Oraon. They say they bought the land, paid through banks, and built their homes in good faith. For the past three nights, he adds, his family has slept on the roadside beside whatever they could salvage from the wreckage.
Forty-two-year-old Santosh watched his own home fall. It was the house where he grew up with his father, where childhood gave way to adulthood. “My wife, my three children, my parents, my four brothers and their families, everyone is homeless,” he says. “We are on the edge. The district administration did not listen to us even once before breaking our house. We don’t know where to go or what to do.”
After the demolition, all thirteen families moved to the High Court. At the time of writing, the court has put a temporary stay on further action by the district administration.
In recent years, demolition drives in Ranchi, carried out in the name of clearing encroachments, have gathered pace. A major railway action in December 2022 set the tone. On December 28, bulldozers moved into the Lohra Kocha area near the railway station, flattening at least forty houses and leaving around 200 people homeless. The next day, December 29, thirty-eight more houses near the Doranda railway overbridge were razed. Railway authorities said the land was required for expansion of the station yard.
Budhan Lohra, a resident of Lohra Kocha, said, “We have lived here since my grandfather’s time. No one ever told us that this land would have to be vacated. Suddenly, the bulldozers came, and we were left on the road.”
Sita Devi, who works as a domestic helper, did not even get time to remove her belongings. The bulldozer ran over her house so quickly that her children’s clothes and kitchen utensils were buried under the debris.
Sumitra Devi, who had been living in Lohra Kocha for forty years, said that after her husband’s death, her home was all she had. “My husband died here. I raised my children here. And then, in a moment, the bulldozer came, and everything was gone. We don’t know where to go now.”
On 10 July 2025, the Ranchi Municipal Corporation carried out a drive in the Doranda market area and removed fifteen alleged illegal structures. In September 2025, one of the largest demolition drives took place near Birsa Chowk on land belonging to Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC). On 2 and 3 September 2025, in a joint action by the district administration and HEC management, more than 100 huts and several permanent houses were demolished.
The administration said the land belonged to the public sector company and had been under encroachment for 25 to 30 years. Leaders from both ruling and opposition parties reached the site and opposed the action. After strong protests, further demolition was halted there as well.
Ramu Oraon, a daily wage worker whose house was demolished in the Birsa Chowk drive, said, “We had been living here for thirty years. We built the house slowly, with our hard-earned money. Now it’s all gone. We don’t have the means to build again somewhere else.”
More recently, demolition drives around the state’s largest hospital also drew attention. On 16 December 2025, at least ten permanent houses, including three two-storey buildings, were demolished in and around the RIMS campus. Two days later, on 18 December 2025, an illegal apartment near DIG Ground and the Doctors’ Colony area close to RIMS was razed, affecting 30 to 40 families
Ashok Kumar had purchased a flat in that apartment with a bank loan. “We took a loan from the bank to buy that flat. Now the house is gone, and the loan is still there. I don’t know how to manage my family.”
In the same month, nearly forty houses that had stood for 40 to 50 years on river and reservoir land near Risaldar Nagar in Doranda were demolished. One of them belonged to Ahsanul Haque. “My daughter’s 10th board exams are about to begin, and we have lost our roof. It is Ramadan, and Eid will follow soon. Where will we go? How will we build again?” he asked.
These demolitions have not just taken away houses. They have shaken livelihoods, disrupted children’s education, and pushed already vulnerable families into deeper uncertainty. For many, the loss is not only of walls and roofs, but of years of savings and a sense of stability.
The administration maintains that the drives are necessary to clear government land for development projects. The families affected say they had lived on these plots for decades and were evicted without any alternative rehabilitation, leaving them in acute distress over shelter and income.
Between December 2022 and February 2026, hundreds of homes have been razed near the railway station, in Doranda, around Birsa Chowk on HEC land, in and around the RIMS campus, and on other government plots across Ranchi.
Former Jharkhand Urban Development Minister and Ranchi MLA C.P. Singh says people come to cities because of poverty and unemployment, just to secure two meals a day. In that struggle, many fall into the trap of land brokers, spend their savings on disputed plots, and eventually lose everything. He says that during his tenure, he rehabilitated around 300 displaced families from Islam Nagar and created vendor markets for those running shops on footpaths. The present government, he says, should also step forward and take responsibility.
Bandhu Tirkey, working president of the Jharkhand Congress and a former minister in the state government, says people should be protected from land brokers who illegally sell tribal land to outsiders. Action must be taken against those involved in such transactions, he says. At the same time, if tribal and Dalit families have been living for years on a piece of land, building huts and raising children there, the government should think about rehabilitation or consider regularising their settlements.
Most of the families affected by these demolitions belong to socially and economically weaker sections, including many from Dalit, Adivasi and OBC communities.
Some observers say it would not be correct to place the entire blame for the bulldozer drives on the state government, since in many instances the action followed orders from the High Court. In such cases, the district administration is required to assist the concerned department or institution in clearing encroachments.
Consider the demolitions around RIMS. The houses and apartment blocks that were pulled down stood on land belonging to the government hospital. Under normal procedure, no building can be constructed without an approved plan from the Ranchi Municipal Corporation. Such approval is granted only after the land has been duly registered and mutated in the owner’s name.
If that is the law, how did a four-storey apartment block and several two- and three-storey houses rise on government land? Who sanctioned them? And how were they allowed to stand for so long?
A similar question arises under the Chota Nagpur Tenancy (CNT) in Ranchi. Tribal land cannot legally be transferred to a non-tribal, which means it cannot be registered in their name. If registration is not legally possible, then how were houses constructed on such land? Who is responsible for allowing this to happen? And when demolitions take place years later, will responsibility be fixed only on those who built and bought, or will action also be taken against those whose negligence or involvement made it possible in the first place?