Ahmedabad: “Everything that I bought with my hard-earned money, and the home I raised my children in, doesn’t exist anymore,” said Mumtaz.In April and May 2025, the Gujarat government conducted a “mega demolition drive” against what they called illegal Bangladeshi settlements in Ahmedabad’s Chandola Lake area. The move came merely five months after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of people’s right to shelter and called out extra-judicial demolitions of properties by the state.Today, Mumtaz’s home stands reduced to rubble alongside at least 12,000 other homes, which were razed by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation in April 2025. The drive in April happened in the backdrop of the Pahalgam attack, following soon after Union home minister Amit Shah vowed to uproot terrorism from India.Nine months later, the remnants of homes surround the Chandola Lake, with no government redevelopment action in sight.Sarkari Bano talks to her former neighbours in Chandola Lake’s Siyasat Nagar. Photo: Tarushi AswaniThe day everything changed“I could only see a sea of policemen as far as my vision went,” said Saiyed Minhajuddin, a former resident of Siyasat Nagar, near the Chandola Lake area.Today when he stands at the lake, the debris of his house haunts him. As he recalls the day when decades of their hard work was laid to rest on the orders of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, he also feels violated, alone and uncertain.“Before demolishing all our homes, the police rounded up people from the Bengali Vas area, and paraded 457 men for four kilometres, alleging that all of them were Bangladeshis who illegally entered India. After that, their JCBs rendered us homeless,” Minhajuddin told The Wire, pointing at the vast expanse of the demolished area, which was largely Muslim populated, with a smaller Devipujak population.After the state flattened his and his neighbours’ houses, Minhajuddin and several others began searching for a roof that could shield them from Gujarat’s blazing heat and its brutal bureaucracy.In April and May 2025, the Gujarat government conducted a demolition drive against allegedly illegal settlements of ‘Bangladeshis’ in Ahmedabad’s Chandola Lake area. Photo: Tarushi Aswani“After our homes were stolen from us, landlords would quote us three times the rent, knowing our vulnerability,” said Sarkari Bano, who believes that poor people are born without rights.Since that day, Bano feels isolated. She says that the government decision plucked them from the homes their parents made. “Humein 20 saal peeche kardia hai, yateem, bewa, gareeb sabse chhatt chheen li (They have pushed us 20 years back. They’ve robbed roofs from widows, orphans and the poor),” Bano said.Gujarat model of demolitionEver since the demolition, empty auto rickshaws have become the living rooms for those dragged out of Siyasat Nagar. Though Minhajuddin and his family of four have been living in a cramped room in Khajuri, near Siyasat Nagar, what they are guarding with their lives are their official ID documents.With no cupboards, drawers or safe vaults in their rented room, Minhajuddin’s scooter has become their storage. It harbours even his passport and ration card. Nine months after the demolition, he has not found a better place for these documents.“You know they called me ‘Bangladeshi’, dragged my wife away, calling her a Bangladeshi too. Our passports saved us,” he said.After the Pahalgam attack, at least 1,000 “illegal” Bangladeshi immigrants, including women and children, were detained following combing operations in Ahmedabad and Surat. But even before the attack happened, Muslims across Gujarat told The Wire that they were witnessing an erasure of Islamic heritage in the state.“You remember when Afreen Fatima’s home was razed? Following that, the Gujarat government has been aping the same attitude,” said advocate Nitish Nair. Nair, who has closely worked with the former residents of Gujarat’s Akbarnagar Na Chapra and other demolished sites, where people have been trying to claim compensation for their demolished homes and rehabilitation of slum dwellers in January 2025, feels that even though there are regulations like the Rehabilitation and Redevelopment of the Slums 2010 and 2013, slum dwellers are forced to remind the authorities about them. Nair also added, “There is a nexus between the authorities and the builder lobbies. Even in the Chandola episode, all plots which were cleared out were once purchased by the poor slum dwellers, and the owners have documentation. Yet, they were wiped out.”At least 12,000 other homes were razed by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation in April 2025. Photo: Tarushi AswaniBeyond Chandola too, several Muslim-dominated areas in Gujarat have faced serious existential threats. Numerous mosques and shrines have been removed, since the Gujarat’s government often deems illegal. If they cannot be proved to be ‘illegal’, they are accused of standing in the way of development.Since 2022, Gujarat has witnessed a series of large-scale demolition drives that have disproportionately affected Muslim residential areas and religious sites, signalling an acceleration of what critics describe as punitive “bulldozer politics”. In March 2022, villages across the Devbhumi Dwarka district saw drives to expel ‘illegal occupants’ from the district. Here, more than 200 Muslim-owned structures were razed at the Gandhvi fishing harbour near the Harsiddhi temple – these included Muslim homes, mosques, Islamic shrines and shops owned by locals. In October 2022, Porbandar saw a massive demolition drive which set out to raze ‘unauthorised structures’ – under the banner of which the district administration demolished the Muradsha Pir Dargah and 12 other Islamic structures. In November 2022, the state government demolished around 300 houses, huts and godowns at Kutch’s Jakhau harbour. The harbour is primarily dominated by Muslims of the Memon community. In September 2024, a dargah, along with eight religious structures associated with Muslims and 47 mostly Muslim-owned houses in Veraval of Gir Somnath district in Gujarat were demolished by authorities in a six-hour drive. In May 2025, Jamnagar authorities demolished several dargahs that were deemed illegal. The Chandola Lake demolitions too saw the desecration of four out of nine shrines that circumference the lake.Redevelopment, rehabilitation and rhetoricShabnam Ansari remembers the horrific day her world literally crumbled. A single parent, she worked as a tailor all her life to be able to afford bricks to build a one-room home in Chandola. So, when those very bricks were brought down by the authorities, Ansari had nowhere to go. “I sold the broken pipes of my demolished home so I could afford rent here in Fatehwadi,” she said.At the height of the Chandola Lake demolition, a group of residents, many of whom had lived in the Siyasat Nagar/Chandola area for decades, filed a petition in the Gujarat high court challenging the state’s bulldozer drive as “illegal” and “arbitrary”, and claiming that it was carried out without prior notice or due process. They were represented in court by senior advocate Anand Yagnik, who argued that the residents had not been adequately informed before their homes were destroyed, that their rights under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution were violated, and that the detention of family members on suspicion of being undocumented migrants was unlawful.A grave of a Sufi saint desecrated during the demolition still lies in ruins. Photo: Tarushi AswaniThe petition sought an urgent stay on the demolitions, pointed to the lack of written eviction notices and the absence of rehabilitation arrangements, and emphasised that many petitioners had lived in the area for decades. However, the high court, relying on provisions of the Gujarat Land Revenue Code and framing the drive as targeting “illegal encroachments” on a notified water body, refused to grant a stay, citing an exception in the November 2024 guidelines of the apex court. The court observed that structures on the periphery could be razed and note that the petitioners could apply for consideration under existing resettlement policies – a ruling that effectively allowed the demolition to continue despite the legal challenge.Senior advocate Yagnik feels that all similar demolitions are being orchestrated to make Ahmedabad a mega metropolitan city which is able to sell the idea of conducting the Commonwealth or even the Olympic Games. But Yagnik also shows another side of the demolitions, “Chandola has not happened in isolation. It was pegged as a matter of ‘illegal Bangladeshis’, but it must been also seen that it is a Muslim-dominated area which votes Congress to power. The demolitions across Gujarat, in Gir Somnath, Devbhumi Dwarka, Jakhau port, Veraval, happened in Muslim areas where Congress has access to power,” Yagnik told The Wire.Yagnik also explained the genesis of the residents at the Chandola Lake which sits near the Shah-E-Alam Dargah. “After the riots of 1969, 1980,1981,1984, 1985 and 1992, Muslims who had little to no money settled in Chandola, the ones who could afford good housing went to Juhapura. This ‘beirutisation’ accelerated after the 2002 riots. So these people whose homes were toppled are decades-old residents,” he said.Games and gambitsIn November 2025, Ahmedabad was confirmed as the venue for the 2030 Commonwealth Games. This achievement came after years of tireless efforts under the aegis of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the several doyens of demolition within the ‘model’ state.Social activist and advocate Hozefa Ujjaini, who has been working with the displaced in Chandola, views the demolition as an act that first unhoused people who earned and bought their own houses, and then slapped them with the burden of applying for EWS housing. Applying for the housing alone costs Rs 7,500, and approved applicants must pay Rs 3.5 lakh to access the house.“How many people out of the thousands of victims will be able to apply for EWS housing? Even when they apply, not all of their applications are approved. Many are dropped citing improper documentation etc. So where do such people go, how will they ever have their own homes now?” asked Ujjaini.A deposit slip for submitting an EWS housing application paid by a former Chandola resident. Photo: Tarushi AswaniFor instance, Minhajuddin lost his land ownership documents in a fire incident in 2018. The fire destroyed more than 500 homes and residents suffered massive losses. Hence, none of Minhajuddin’s available documents were enough for his application for EWS housing.Ujjaini also said, “Its a blunder by the AMC and the state that they did not conduct any survey to identify slumdwellers. There is no standard procedure carried out by the AMC to provide houses to the slums dwellers. Even though Chandola people fall in the 2010 rehabilitation policy of the government, they were not surveyed and provided alternatives.”Kaleem Siddiqui, a social activist who volunteered to assist the victims of the Chandola demolition, says that what happened is a result of close nexus between AMC and builder lobbies. “A communal narrative was created to kick people out of their homes, using allegations like Bangladeshi, drug peddling etc. [and] Chandola was emptied,” Siddiqui said.Siddiqui recalls that after the demolition, when people were collecting what remained of their belonging and mourning the death of their dreams, the police did not even allow NGOs to provide the victims with food and water.Several former Chandola residents have moved to Ahmedabad’s Fatehwadi, near Juhapura. Photo: Tarushi AswaniFor the displaced residents of Chandola, the demolition was not followed by any structured process of relief or rehabilitation. No prior survey was conducted, no resettlement plan was announced, and no temporary housing was arranged. Families were left to negotiate the private rental market on their own, often at sharply inflated rates, while coping with the loss of livelihoods, disrupted schooling and severed access to their own community.Residents and legal observers argue that the absence of safeguards was not incidental: the area’s population was both overwhelmingly Muslim and economically marginal, making it easier to frame the settlement as “illegal” and its residents as disposable. Although Gujarat’s 2010 slum rehabilitation policy mandates identification and resettlement of eligible residents, it was not operationalised before the clearance. What followed was not relocation, but exclusion.For former residents, legal analysts and social activits, the Chandola demolition stands as a grim reminder of what it means to be Muslim in a state which completes 30 years of being ruled by the BJP.Tarushi Aswani is an independent journalist.