Your jhuggi is 4 km from a recognised cluster. The law says you're not nearby.

Three Kilometres, Not Five: The Supreme Court Draws the Line on Delhi Slum Rehabilitation

Manoj Kumar and others lived in jhuggis — makeshift homes in Delhi. They were not part of any officially recognised jhuggi cluster. That single fact put their claim to rehabilitation benefits at the mercy of a definition: what counts as “nearby areas” under the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board Act, 2010? The answer, the Supreme Court has now confirmed, is three kilometres — not five. For the petitioners, that meant the difference between a roof and nothing.

The jhuggi dwellers who fell outside the list

The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) maintains a list of recognised Jhuggi Jhopri Bastis — clusters of slum dwellings that qualify for rehabilitation. Manoj Kumar and his co-petitioners lived in jhuggis that were not on that list. They were, in the Board’s eyes, scattered structures, not part of any recognised basti.

But the petitioners had a plan. They argued that their jhuggis should be “deemed” part of a nearby recognised cluster. The DUSIB Act, through Sections 2(f) and 2(g), defines what a Jhuggi Jhopri Basti is and when a jhuggi can be treated as part of one. The key phrase: “nearby areas.” If the Board could interpret that phrase broadly enough, the petitioners’ homes would be swept into a recognised cluster, and they would become eligible for rehabilitation.

The petitioners wanted a five-kilometre radius. The Board, and later the courts, said three.

What the High Court decided — twice

The matter first came before a Single Judge of the High Court of Delhi. The Judge held that “nearby areas” under Sections 2(f) and 2(g) of the DUSIB Act meant a three-kilometre radius. The petitioners’ jhuggis fell outside that radius. They were not entitled to rehabilitation. The claim was dismissed.

The petitioners did not give up. They moved a Letters Patent Appeal — LPA No. 71/2023 — before a Division Bench of the same High Court. On 21 February 2023, the Division Bench upheld the Single Judge. Three kilometres it was. The appeal was dismissed.

That left one door: the Supreme Court of India under Article 136 of the Constitution.

The argument before the Supreme Court

Before Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice Pankaj Mithal, the petitioners pressed their case. They pointed to two Board proceedings — one dated 22 August 2019, another dated 8 August 2022 — which, they argued, showed that the Board itself had never taken a clear-cut decision on what “nearby areas” meant. If the Board was uncertain, the petitioners said, the Court should adopt a more generous interpretation: five kilometres instead of three.

The learned Counsel for the petitioners urged the Bench to read the DUSIB Act in a manner that would bring more jhuggi dwellers within the rehabilitation net. A five-kilometre radius, they argued, was a reasonable and purposive construction of “nearby areas.”

The Supreme Court, however, was not persuaded.

The three-kilometre rule stands

On 17 July 2023, the Bench dismissed the Special Leave Petition. The order was crisp: “The Special Leave Petition stands dismissed. Pending application(s), if any, stand closed.”

The Court found no infirmity in the High Court’s interpretation. The three-kilometre radius, the Bench held, was a permissible construction of “nearby areas” under Sections 2(f) and 2(g) of the DUSIB Act. It was not for the Supreme Court, exercising its discretionary jurisdiction under Article 136, to substitute that interpretation with a different one — especially when the High Court’s view was neither unreasonable nor perverse.

The ratio decidendi is straightforward: the High Court’s interpretation of “nearby areas” as a three-kilometre radius is a permissible construction that does not warrant interference under Article 136. Consequently, dwellers of jhuggis that fall outside the list of recognised clusters are not entitled to rehabilitation under the DUSIB Act when their jhuggis cannot be deemed part of a Jhuggi Jhopri Basti based on that interpretation.

THE TEST: If your jhuggi is more than three kilometres from a recognised Jhuggi Jhopri Basti, you are not “nearby” under the DUSIB Act — and you are not entitled to rehabilitation benefits through that route.

What the Court did not decide

One thread was left dangling. The petitioners had argued that the Board’s own proceedings — the 2019 and 2022 decisions — showed no clear-cut determination of what “nearby areas” meant. The Supreme Court did not engage with this argument substantively. It made no ruling on whether the Board itself had failed to define the term properly, or whether the Board could adopt a different radius in future administrative decisions.

This leaves a small but significant opening. If the Board, in its own wisdom, decides to adopt a five-kilometre radius or some other methodology for defining “nearby areas,” nothing in this judgment prevents it from doing so. The Court only held that the High Court’s three-kilometre interpretation was permissible — not that it was the only permissible interpretation, or that the Board is bound by it.

For advocates representing slum dwellers, this obiter dictum is worth noting. The battle over the radius may not be over; it may simply have shifted from the courts to the Board’s own administrative processes.

Why this matters in practice

For advocates, CFOs, and founders who deal with real estate, urban development, or social infrastructure projects in Delhi, this judgment settles a recurring question: what is the catchment area for slum rehabilitation under the DUSIB Act? The answer is three kilometres from a recognised cluster. Any jhuggi beyond that radius is, for now, outside the rehabilitation net.

For developers and investors, this has practical implications. If you are planning a project near a recognised jhuggi cluster, you need to know which jhuggis within a three-kilometre radius are likely to be deemed part of that cluster — and therefore eligible for rehabilitation. The judgment provides a clear, judicially approved metric.

For the petitioners — Manoj Kumar and the others — the judgment is a dead end. Their jhuggis were more than three kilometres from any recognised cluster. They will not get rehabilitation benefits through this route. Whether they have any other remedy — through the Board’s own processes, or through a different statutory scheme — remains an open question.

The bottom line

If your jhuggi is more than three kilometres from a recognised Jhuggi Jhopri Basti, the DUSIB Act does not entitle you to rehabilitation — and the Supreme Court will not rewrite the definition of “nearby areas” to help you.