A Right to Have Housing Rights? Reappraising the Constitutional Gravity of Shelter Claims in India

Abstract Since the early 1980s, the Supreme Court of India has recognised a wide catalogue of unenumerated rights as functional extensions of the right to life stipulated in Article 21 of the Constitution of India , including a right to shelter. For the most part, the right has meant unenforceable state duties and access to Francesco administrative justice under Article 32 of the Constitution, in ways that substantively deviate from the standards envisaged under Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , and which find a paradigmatic example of constitutionalisation in Section 26 of the Constitution of South Africa . This relatively uncontested understanding of the right is, however, complicated by a line of High Court decisions, most notably Sudama Singh and Ajay Maken , which heavily rely on international human rights standards and South African constitutional jurisprudence to expand the procedural guarantees afforded in forced evictions. Far from being a general trend, this interpretative approach has the merit of exposing key deficiencies in the traditional right to shelter approach and creatively counterweighing the otherwise constitutionally pre-eminent unconditional prohibition of encroachments on public land.