'Sometimes the slum clearance is engineered and manipulated in such a manner that it looks like an accident. One of the strategies used to evict resident slum dwellers is to set fire in slums. Slum fire continues to be a recurrent incidence in Indian cities. In fact fires break out with uncanny regularity in the slums of most big cities. While many such fires are caused accidentally, in quite a few cases slums are deliberately burnt in order to pave way for the construction of housing complexes for the rich as well as for building office and business complexes, hotels, malls, etc. According to Simpreet Singh, an activist of the National Alliance of People's Movement (NAPM), the civic authorities in Delhi regularly burn down slums. A cluster of more than 300 small huts in Lucknow was evicted by setting fire. The residents of the slum said they suspected the fire as a modus operandi of the state administration to vacate prime location. In Mumbai, fire razed a slum at Mandala in Mankhurd when the municipal authorities were conducting a demolition drive. Some of the slum dwellers alleged that the BMC officials and police had set the slum on fire “using our own stoves” to make the demolition work easier. According to them, “They first entered our houses and drove us all out with lathis and then the slum caught fire.” Allegations of such incidence of civic authorities in regularly burn down slums are reported from many other cities including, Ahmadabad, Bangaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and so on. Although solid proof of the alleged involvement of the local administration/government in slum fires is not available, field investigation by NGOs and social scientists have indicated that “in many such cases of slum fires the possibility of their involvement cannot be ruled out.” In Chennai slum fires have become a common phenomenon. Although there are no evidence of deliberate burning of slums by the authorities, often the victims of slum fire content that their slums have been deliberately burnt by real estate mafia. According to some residents the fire that gutted several huts in Srinivasapuram near Santhome on Sunday was caused by miscreants. Whatever might be the cause of the fire the affected households don't have anything left. The state government has announced Rs 5,000, 5kg of rice, a saree and a dhoti per hut. But no compensation has been provided for the loss of books and uniforms of the kids. It will give temporary and partial relief. Permanent solution to the problem could found only by providing them with modern fire proof tenements in the same place or nearby and not by  packing off them to suburban areas .'' Dr.C.Murukadas, The Times of India, Sep. 4, 2012.