Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday came down heavily on the Maharashtra government over its policy on compensation to the kin of manual scavengers who died while working inside manholes. Quashing the policy, the court directed the government to identify, within 6 months, all persons who died while engaged in "hazardous cleaning" as defined under Section 2(d) of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.
Upon such identification, the state government shall pay compensation of ₹30 lakh to the dependants of each deceased person, the court said.
Coming down heavily on manual scavenging, the High Court said that while India has reached the moon, the "social evil" of the caste system still persists, forcing citizens into work that is "below human dignity."
The HC made these observations while quashing the state government's policy that placed the burden of compensating the kin of workers who died during hazardous cleaning on private societies and employers.
A division bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande, in an order passed last week, directed the state government to immediately compensate the dependants of victims. The government can subsequently recover the amount from the responsible private entities or employers, the order said.
"In the 21st century, we boast about reaching the other side of the moon, yet the hard reality that stares us in the face is that the social evil of the caste system is still followed in our country, which forces some of our citizens to do work that is below human dignity," the HC said.
Though the Constitution guarantees all citizens equality before the law, "even after 75 years of adopting the Constitution, our country is not free from the social evil that has haunted us for ages", it asserted.
"Manual scavenging is one such practice, which forces a particular class of community to undertake this inhumane practice for generations, in spite of prohibition imposed on it by various judicial pronouncements of the Supreme Court and statutes prohibiting such practice," the HC said.
The court passed the ruling on a writ petition filed by trade union Shramik Janata Sangh and others challenging Item 11 of the Government Resolutions (GRs) dated December 12, 2019, and April 30, 2025.
They had sought to quash and set aside the GRs, which made private individuals liable for payment of compensation following the death of manual scavengers instead of the state or local authorities.
The petitions were filed after the state government and local authorities failed to implement the provisions of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. The Act aims to prohibit the social evil of manual scavenging.
"The Act of 2013 does not discriminate against the workers engaged in hazardous cleaning on the basis of their employer. The intended object of the said enactment is to eliminate the dehumanizing practice of manual scavenging," the court said.
Terming the policy "clearly violative" of the fundamental right to equality guaranteed under the Constitution, the bench struck down Item 11 in both GRs.
It directed the state and local authorities to immediately disburse the mandated compensation to the families of deceased sanitation workers, regardless of whether they were employed publicly or privately, and subsequently recover the amount from the private employers.