Bombay HC Orders Maharashtra Govt to Pay Rs 30 Lakh to Manual Scavengers' Kin

The Bombay High Court on Thursday ruled that the Maharashtra government must pay Rs 30 lakh compensation to the families of sanitation workers who died while engaged in manual scavenging, setting aside a state government decision that discriminated against those under private employment.

A bench comprising Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande directed the state government to identify, within a six-month window, individuals who died while carrying out hazardous cleaning as defined under the Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. Following this identification process, the court directed the state to release the Rs 30 lakh compensation to the dependants of each deceased worker in accordance with a 2025 Supreme Court judgment.

The court issued the ruling after hearing a petition filed by the workers' union Shramik Janata Sangh, activist Shreyas Pande, and Raju Madhve. Madhve is the father of Suraj, a sanitation worker who died while cleaning a septic tank inside a housing society in Mumbra in 2022.

The petitioners had approached the high court seeking to strike down item 11 of a Government Resolution (GR) issued in December 2019, which determined the authorities responsible for disbursing compensation.

Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate Gayatri Singh along with advocate Sudha Bharadwaj argued that item 11 of the December 2019 resolution unfairly placed the liability of paying compensation on private housing societies rather than making the state government or local municipal authorities responsible for the deaths.