Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Thursday set aside the state govt’s decision that discriminated against sanitation workers who worked under private employment and died while engaged in the work of manual scavenging. The court held that each such worker’s kin were entitled to receive Rs 30 lakh compensation.Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande directed the state govt to identify within six months persons who had died while engaged in hazardous cleaning as defined under a section of the Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. Upon identification, the state government shall pay compensation of Rs 30 lakh to the dependants of each such deceased person in terms of a 2025 Supreme Court judgment, they added.The petition was filed by Shramik Janata Sangh, a workers’ union, along with Raju Madhve, the father of Suraj, a worker who died while cleaning a septic tank in a Mumbra housing society in 2022, and activist Shreyas Pande. They urged the high court to set aside item 11 in the Dec 2019 GR that determined authorities who will pay compensation.Senior advocate Gayatri Singh, with advocate Sudha Bharadwaj, for the petitioners, had argued that item 11 had made private societies liable to pay compensation on death instead of the state or local authorities. They said according to SC’s 2025 judgment, the authorities concerned were responsible for ensuring compensation to dependents of the deceased instead of making private societies liable to pay it. They said the authorities could subsequently recover the amount from the private parties.The judges set aside item 11, along with an April 30, 2025, GR, “in so far as it discriminates against the sanitation workers working at the private establishments under the private contractors as compared to their counterparts working under the state government or state undertakings”.They said that as a consequence of setting aside item number 11, “the sanitation workers in the private sector shall be entitled to compensation from the state government, which can later be recovered from the funds of the respective employers”.The judges directed that the dependants of four deceased sanitation workers whose case the petitioners had espoused—Devidas Chandrakant, Mahadev Zope, Suraj Madhve and Ghanshyam Kori—shall be entitled for compensation from Thane Municipal Corporation “if not already compensated”. As the judgment was pronounced in chambers, a copy was not uploaded at the time of going to press.
