The narrow streets of central and north Delhi are cramped with dingy, greying coaching centres, the Mecca for thousands of UPSC aspirants from across the country who want to take a shot at a job in the prestigious Indian administrative services. In the lanes abutting this area are hundreds of rooms and barsatis housing these candidates. Klesh, 28, is from Maharashtra and he had taken a room on rent in Old Rajinder Nagar. He lived a modest life here, studying and working, until the extended lockdown changed everything.
Klesh had somehow managed to scrape together rent for two months but in May when his funds ran dry, he was forced to vacate the room. This, despite orders from the Ministry of Home Affairs on March 29 and the Delhi government on April 22 that said landlords evicting migrant labourers and students are liable to action under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. Landlords, the orders said, cannot demand rent for a period of one month from workers and migrants.
Running dry
“I had no choice but to leave,” says Klesh, as he prepared to depart for Amravati, his home town in Maharashtra, where his family lives in the shanty town of Belpura. He had exhausted every avenue: he had gone twice to the temporary police booth in Old Rajinder Nagar, set up soon after the government orders, but they would not issue a guarantee of rent waiver. Klesh then collected an e-pass to travel back. Klesh’s father is a tailor in Amravati. He used to send his son ₹14,000 a month for rent while Klesh funded other expenses by means of a part-time job as a content writer in a coaching centre nearby. “I spent ₹14,000 on rent, ₹2,000 for the reading hall, ₹3,000 for study material, and ₹5,000 on living expenses,” says Klesh. When the lockdown was declared, his father’s income dried up, and so did the rent money. “I skipped meals to save money for rent,” says the student, but with the lockdown extension in May, he ran out of money entirely. “I felt reassured because I had the Delhi government circular in hand,” he says.
Same boat brothers
Reality, however, was very different. The landlord denied that the government had made any such claim and refused even a discount on the rent. “On May 7, when he called his tone was lawyer-like; he picked loopholes in the government order,” recalls Klesh. One such loophole was that since UPSC aspirants were not studying in an educational institution, landlords decided they need not be treated as ‘students’. Another ambiguity was whether a clause in the orders that waived a month’s rent for migrants applied to students or not.
A student in his tiny rented room in Mukherjee Nagar
Delhi’s Patel Nagar, Old Rajinder Nagar, Karol Bagh, Mukherjee Nagar and Lakshmi Nagar are filled with hundreds of students who are in the same boat as Klesh. Young men and women, whose parents are small farmers or who run small businesses and whose earnings have been lost. Rooms in these areas carry high rents but students flock here because they are strategically located near bookstalls and coaching centres and there’s a sense of camaraderie among all the UPSC aspirants.
Confusing order
“In Amravati or Pune, I cannot get the kind of help one needs to prepare for these exams; that’s why I came to Delhi,” says Klesh. In fact, he cannot even afford the ₹1 lakh or more required for a formal 10-month course and gets by because in this community he can learn by osmosis.
Amisha Gupta is an UPSC aspirant from Kolkata, who lives in a room in Old Rajinder Nagar. She believes the Delhi State government order was not clear enough. “Yes, the police booth did help me avoid eviction. But even the officials there seemed confused by the order,” she says.
As many as nine FIRs have been filed against landlords in Mukherjee Nagar alone for forceful eviction, yet the government has taken no action. In protest, 1,899 aspirants came together on a Telegram chat group called ‘United Students Front’ to counter the pressure from landlords and brokers. Later, students filed a petition in the Supreme Court. The petitioners, including Anmol Singh and Chetna Mishra, said that lakhs of students were stranded in Delhi due to the lockdown and “are facing harassment at the hands of their landlords on account of their inability to pay rent”. They sought a waiver on rent payment for four months from April to July. Despite the MHA order, their plea was rejected.
Being inhuman
Infuriated and frustrated, the UPSC aspirants have now decided to organise themselves through Google forms and list out ‘blacklisted’ properties for post-COVID times. “Students can fill in the forms and we will counter-check and classify the properties not just for current aspirants but for future students as well,” says Singh, a student from Haryana who lives in Old Rajinder Nagar.
A student walks past a gate pasted with leaflets advertising PGs in Mukherjee Nagar
Meanwhile, the students have mailed Aam Aadmi Party MLA Raghav Chadha, State Education Minister Manish Sisodia, and other officials for help and clarifications. A meeting was fixed between students and the Residents’ Welfare Associations of Old Rajinder Nagar and Mukherjee Nagar. Deepak Pathak, a member of the RWA in Old Rajinder Nagar, says students did approach him and he had suggested that they have an informal meeting with the landlords. But, says Pathak, “one also needs to think of the landlords, most of whom are elderly people with rents as their only source of income.”
A compromise has not yet been reached. Landlords like Madan Mohan Mehta in Old Rajinder Nagar claim to have waived a month’s rent. “But I can’t do so any longer. I am retired and the rent is my only income. The State needs to compensate us as well,” says Mehta. Many students agree with Mehta.
Abhinaya (name changed on request), another UPSC aspirant in Mukherjee Nagar, says she empathises with her landlord but questions the State’s rent policy. “My landlord has said I can pay rent after three months, but where will I get the money even then? My father is a farmer in Bihar who is now forced to sell watermelon at ₹1 per kg. Where will he get the money to send me?” she asks.
The crisis has made Chetna Mishra, one of the students who drafted the petition, even more determined to give the civil services a shot. “There are no humanitarian grounds in the administration. I will study to be a civil servant, even more so now that I have seen how many loopholes there are,” she says.
The author is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata.
