Three bills that could reshape daily life for millions of Delhi residents landed on the floor of the Delhi Legislative Assembly on Friday, 7 August 2026 — and the centrepiece is a slum rehabilitation overhaul that the city's poorest families have waited decades for. Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta tabled the legislative package during the ongoing Monsoon Session, making a direct push to convert informal settlements into permanent homes and hold government officials legally accountable for service delays.

The 2025 Cutoff That Could House 99% of Delhi's Slum Dwellers

The headline bill proposes extending the eligibility cutoff date for slum rehabilitation from 2015 to 1 January 2025 — a decade-long leap that the government says will bring approximately 99% of eligible families living in Delhi's jhuggi (informal settlements) within reach of permanent housing. The old 2015 cutoff had long been criticised for leaving out hundreds of thousands of families who settled in the years after that date. Indian states have periodically revised such cutoffs to widen the net of housing access, but a ten-year extension in a single legislative move is a significant escalation of that trend.

If passed, the bill would make pucca — meaning permanent, structurally sound — homes accessible to a near-universal share of Delhi's slum population, a constituency that has historically been caught between electoral promises and bureaucratic eligibility walls.

Right to Service Act: Officials on the Clock

The second proposal is a Right to Service Act that would legally mandate time-bound delivery of government services to every Delhi resident. The critical edge: officials who fail to deliver within prescribed timelines would face penalties and fines. Several Indian states have adopted similar right-to-service frameworks over the past decade, with mixed enforcement records. Delhi's version, as proposed, puts financial consequences directly on the responsible official — a design choice aimed at closing the accountability gap that has blunted similar laws elsewhere.

For ordinary residents navigating everything from ration card renewals to property documents, the law would convert a bureaucratic courtesy into a legal entitlement.

Bed & Breakfast Scheme Scrapped for a New Safety Framework

The third item is a proposal to abolish the existing Bed & Breakfast Scheme and replace it with a new regulatory framework better suited to Delhi's current urban safety and hospitality needs. The government framed the move as strengthening both citizen security and administrative order — signalling that the replacement system will carry tighter safety standards than the outgoing scheme.

Regulatory overhauls of short-stay accommodation are increasingly common in major Indian cities as urban tourism grows and informal hospitality arrangements multiply. The specifics of the replacement framework are yet to be detailed publicly.

All three proposals now move toward legislative scrutiny and a vote. The real test will be in the passage timelines and, crucially, the implementation machinery built around them — particularly for the slum rehabilitation cutoff, where the gap between eligibility on paper and keys in hand has historically been wide. Delhi's most vulnerable residents are watching this session closely.