Ex-Delhi Chief Secretary Supports CM Gupta's Slum Demolition Initiatives

Former Delhi chief secretary Shailaja Chandra on Thursday urged Chief Minister Rekha Gupta to show political courage and abandon decades of “appeasement politics” in favour of long-term urban planning.

“You can interrupt the decay - or you can inherit its failed logic. Delhi deserves courage, not administrative tinkering,” Chandra wrote in an open letter in The Indian Express. She congratulated Gupta on assuming charge of what she referred to as "India’s most demanding urban assignment".

About Shailaja Chandra

Shailaja Chandra was the first female Chief Secretary of Delhi. She is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from the 1966 batch, who has served across various capacities in the central government and multiple states, including Delhi, Manipur, Goa, and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

Bhagidari project which focused on public participation and transparency in governance was an initiative launched during her tenure as the Chief Secretary of Delhi. She played key role in policy formulation for premier health institutions including AIIMS, PGI Chandigarh, ICMR, and NIMHANS during her continuous seven-year stint in the Health Ministry

Chandra's Supporting The Delhi Demolitions

Chandra said she had no political agenda and was not seeking an advisory role - only a response from the Chief Minister to what she described as a “moment of reckoning”.

Chandra also opined that the chief minister has a rare opportunity to break with the past and outshine even Delhi’s most enduring and popular chief minister, the late Sheila Dikshit, especially with the backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Manohar Lal Khattar.

In the letter, the former bureaucrat accused successive governments of choosing vote-bank politics over planning, turning Delhi’s migrant influx into a “politics of patronage”. She highlighted the violation of planning and environment norms in legitimising temporary shelter through free utilities and retroactive regularisation.

“Seven million people live in unauthorised colonies. Effluent from industries using carcinogens is discharged into storm-water drains. The Yamuna is choking. And yet, the politics of appeasement continues,” she wrote.

Blaming the continued erosion of urban planning on ad hoc policy, judicial verdict reversals, and legislative actions that allowed large-scale encroachment of public and agricultural land, she called for an “end to endless retrofitting".

While asking the chief minister to set a limit on further regularisation of illegal colonies and publicly declare that no further encroachments would be legitimised. She suggested using all available enforcement tools with proper coordination with state administrative machinery.

Chandra also recommended the creation of “migration-responsive” housing near employment hubs. Further she called for temporary structures for new migrants, and distribution of services based on need, not political convenience.