During the Emergency of 1975–77 the suspension of civil liberties enabled aggressive slum demolition and beautification drives, most notoriously the clearing of settlements around Turkman Gate in Old Delhi, where police firing killed residents resisting eviction. Tens of thousands were forcibly removed and relocated to distant resettlement colonies on the city's edge, often paired with coercive sterilisation campaigns. The episode became a byword for the violence of top-down clearance. It hardened later arguments for in-situ upgrading and resettlement rights.
It is the emblematic case of coercive slum clearance and peripheral resettlement, shaping subsequent debates over the rights of the urban poor.
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