In a city with a population heading north of 22 million, most of whom are cramped into a seemingly endless horizon of grey concrete towers, Lutyens' Delhi is the deceptive anomaly at the city's centre.

Named after the renowned British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who was instrumental in the design of the new capital for what was then the jewel in the crown of the British empire, Lutyens' Delhi's wide, tree-lined boulevards reek of a distant colonial past.

Unlike the rest of Delhi, a dusty smog-coated megalopolis where some residents are crammed into neighbourhoods with a density as high as 30,000 people per square kilometre, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this part of the city is its eerie silence.

With only 600 of the mostly white bungalows remaining, on plots of land that average from between 40 to 60 square metres, the sale of a Lutyens bungalow is such a rare occurrence that it can attract bids in the tens of millions.

One residence currently on the market is the former Mexican ambassador's residence, where the original lease was signed by that country's Nobel-prize winning poet Octavio Paz, and has a reported asking price of $125 million.

"This is the most sought-after neighbourhood in India, perhaps one of the most sought-after in the world if you go by price per square foot," says Shveta Jain, executive director of residential property sales for the international realtors Cushman & Wakefield.

"It's got the best location, it has the best water supply, the most reliable electricity supply, it is green, it's spacious and it is strategic in the sense that this is where the country's elite are located. A home here is a trophy, a prize to be won."

Most of the Lutyens bungalows are officially owned by the central government and are the ultimate perk that come with the rise to high office, and are handed out to cabinet ministers, the leaders of political parties and the heads of important government agencies and departments.

The only problem is that ministers who then become ex-ministers get so used to their cherished digs that getting them to move out can prove quite a challenge.

Since the May general elections that swept out the Congress Party and brought new Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power, Delhi authorities have been forced to issue formal eviction notices to 30 former high-office holders who are refusing to budge.

After the eviction notices proved ineffective, earlier this month local authorities have even cut off water and electricity to the bungalows.

In the case of the family of former civil aviation minister Ajit Singh, who had occupied their residence for more than 30 years, Delhi police last week stormed the gates of the Tughlaq Road residence, facing stiff resistance from the family's army of supporters who were camped outside.

With hundreds more protesters being bussed in from neighbouring states to help protect the Singh family's interests, police have now been forced to close off several entries to the street.

"It's national scandal, a tragicomic opera," says prominent Indian political commentator S. Nihal Singh, a former editor of The Statesman newspaper. "These people are literally squatters, they're refusing to move from homes that do not belong to them, it's really an outrageous situation."

The questions is, says Singh, how much effort should the new government devote to evicting these people.

"I think the man on the street in a way accepts that this is the way India works, but if we are going to change the way India works, if we are going to rid the country of these kinds of corrupt practices, then this might be a good place to start."

Shutting off the water and electricity has proved effective – 15 of those refusing to budge have either left or signalled their intention to leave – but with the other half still refusing to go, local authorities have a fight on their hands.

Yet the prestige that comes with owning a Lutyens bungalow can also be a terrible burden that tears families apart.

When the bungalows were built,  Delhi was an almost deserted city, the bungalows sat on the edge of what was then dense jungle, and those Indian families who purchased a bungalow were considered adventurous for choosing to live in the city's outskirts.

After partition, when Delhi was faced with an enormous influx of refugees transposed by the upheaval of their country being divided into two, Lutyens' Delhi quickly found itself surrounded by new, more tightly packed neighbourhoods and the owners and their descendants found themselves sitting on a goldmine.

One example of the toll this can have on a family has been brilliantly told in a new novel that has  Delhi's elites buzzing, Daughter By Court Order by Ratna Vira, a thinly disguised roman-a-clef based on her own family's bitter struggle to divide the spoils of a Lutyen's bungalow.

"It's common that you will have 30 or 40 members of one family who claim ownership of one house," says Cushman & Wakefield's Shveta Jain. "With new property taxation laws, and other restrictions on building renovations, it's got to the point where these houses cannot be sold."