Civic body chiefs to be held liable for manual scavenging: Gujarat HC

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Monday stated that if any person is made to clean a manhole or sewer, then the head of the civic body concerned – municipal commissioner, municipality chief officer, or gram panchayat sarpanch – will be held liable for violating the law that prohibits this inhuman practice.

Demanding an “immediate stoppage of the practice of manual scavenging,” the bench of acting Chief Justice A J Desai and Justice Biren Vaishav issued the order in response to a PIL by an NGO called Manav Garima, seeking the end to the practice that has caused the loss of many sanitation workers’ lives. PIL also alleged that authorities have not provided compensation in several cases where workers died while cleaning sewers. The government admitted to disbursing compensation in only 137 out of 152 cases. The HC directed the state government to pay compensation to the legal heirs of the deceased workers before the next hearing.

The state government claimed that the government bodies do not engage in such practices, but they are carried out by private contractors. The bench then asked if any action had been taken against the private contractors. Setting the date of the next hearing on June 19, the court ordered the state government to immediately put a stop to this practice. DeshGujarat