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The Bombay High Court has asked the Maharashtra government to clarify by when manual scavenging would be stopped by the civic bodies across the state. It has ordered the civic body of Malshiras to file its response to a plea seeking a job on grounds of compassion.

The petitioner stated that the Malshiras Municipal Council in Solapur district has failed to implement recommendations of the Lad-Page committee – set up by the government to create posts for the legal heirs of sanitation staffers – and has not appointed her as a “safai-kamgar” after her father-in-law’s death.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Virendrasingh Bisht was hearing a plea filed by one Nita Waghmare seeking a job on grounds of compassion in place of her father-in-law, a safai karmachari, who died while scavenging manually in 2013.

The bench was informed that the Municipal Council of Malshiras was dragging its feet over Nita's plea and had even written to the Urban Development Department (UDD) to provide guidance over the issue of providing jobs for Safai Karmacharis on grounds of compassion.

Nita cited an RTI response that she received from the Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC) which stated that there is a government policy for providing jobs for the Scheduled Caste community people for the posts of sweeper or safai karmacharis.

On Wednesday, the bench was told that scavenging goes on manually till date.

At this juncture, the bench stated that, "We want to know by when would this manual scavenging stop? Why aren't all the Municipal Corporations across the state stopping this?"

"Let us know on the next date as to by when the municipal bodies will switch to mechanical scavenging," the Chief Justice added.

The bench, accordingly ordered the Malshiras Council to file its response within three weeks. It kept the matter for hearing final arguments after four weeks.

(With inputs from FPJ)