How to Evict a VIP Squatter

It’s almost impossible but there’s one foolproof method.

It’s almost impossible but there’s one foolproof method.

It’s almost impossible but there’s one foolproof method.

It would be a heart of stone that doesn’t bleed for Ram Vilas Paswan. Here was a man who could not lose—who got a Guinness record for an incredible election margin, who was always minister no matter which ideology or party came to power, but, alas, who now, touched by the fickle finger of fate, finds himself a defeated man without a Lok Sabha seat for his party, not even his own. It’s a tragic tale and yet, with great reluctance, this question must be asked: what’s he still doing in a house paid for by me, the taxpayer?

The same must be asked of Mani Shankar Aiyar too. This was the man who, as panchayati raj minister, envisioned India writing its destiny through gram sabhas. When he lost the election and the ministry, it was apt that he retire to a village. But Aiyar stays on in metropolitan Delhi in a house I pay for. So do Renuka Chowdhury and Ram Jethmalani and Shankar Singh Vaghela, and many illustrious ex-minister squatters of Delhi.

“Once a politician enters a bungalow, he doesn’t want to leave. Time will come when most of these houses will become memorials,” was an acerbic comment by the Supreme Court last year. It said the Government had no will or guts to evict powerful squatters. But maybe the Government just doesn’t know how to. After all, they do try—there is a penalty for illegally occupying bungalows. Sometimes, as much as Rs 2 lakh per month. A recent report by the The Times of India quoted an official of the Directorate of Estates’ litigation division, where these cases are referred to, saying that existing fines was not enough of a deterrent.

But no matter what the quantum of fine, it still won’t work. Because a successful politician-squatter is never short of money. There is, however, an alternative, a foolproof one at that. It doesn’t require guts or will, just a minor tweaking of an existing law. What if the penalty was not money but votes. What if there was a rule that for every day a politician squats in a government bungalow, 5,000 votes will be taken out of his tally in the next Lok Sabha election. If the minister were fighting an Assembly election, let’s be fair, make the fine less punitive at 1,000 cancelled votes a day. And something similar for the Rajya Sabha too. Ram Vilas Paswan stays next to Sonia Gandhi in an equally spacious bungalow and that’s a powerful incentive for staying put. But chances are if you bring in the ‘vote for squat’ rule, he would be out of the gate with his handbag even before the eviction notice is put in the post box.

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