Fact check · Delhi · 12 September 2026
Those screens are not hiding the poor. They are blocking a shot.
A video of cloth walls along a VVIP route became a morality play. The SOP is older, duller, and about snipers — not shame.
Social media said the government was draping slums so a visiting motorcade would not have to see India. That is a powerful sentence. It is also wrong.
Open stretches on a VVIP route are a gift to anyone with a rifle and a rooftop. Screens, hoardings, and temporary walls shrink the visual range of an attacker. They are ugly. They are not a confession. Conflating a protection protocol with a poverty cover is how a timeline wins an afternoon and a city loses a fact.
Our Hindi file said it without the English hedge: यह झुग्गी छुपाना नहीं, सुरक्षा प्रोटोकॉल है.