Manual Scavenging: Karnataka High Court Irked By 'Zero Conviction' Rate, Says Authorities Not Handling Cases With Due Seriousness

The Karnataka High Court on Monday expressed regret at the 'zero conviction rate' with respect to unabated manual scavenging activities in the State, despite a ban.

"What we do not understand is why everything has to be done by court? Why do you need a direction from our side? What a travesty of justice" orally remarked a division bench of Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice Krishna S Dixit while dealing with the suo moto case registered last week.

The bench expressed that the authorities responsible to bring these cases to a logical end are seemingly not operating with due seriousness.

"Offender to be booked and matter to be brought to logical end. It can be achieved if only those persons who are involved in the process take the matter with due seriousness. Persons involved are IO, public prosecutors and adjudicating authority.”

The bench also suggested that since most of manual scavenging cases showcase underlying caste discrimination, steps should be taken under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities Act). However, it added, “It is common knowledge that either no serious steps are taken to see that provisions of the Atrocities Act are pressed into service or in case even if such provisions are pressed in service, unfortunately the outcome is minimal."

Amicus Curiae Sridhar Prabhu submitted that unless Section 3(j) of the SC/ST Act, which penalises employment of a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe to do manual scavenging, is effectively implemented, no purpose would be achieved only by direction to pay compensation or to make rehabilitation measures.

Court has issued notices to the Union and State government and directed them to file a detailed and comprehensive report before the court by January 30.

Further it recorded the submission of Advocate General Shashi Kiran Shetty that the state government is in the process of procuring equipment in a phased manner, so as to remove human intervention.

Hearing this, the bench orally responded, “When the State government can release funds for issues raised by mighty people/organisations, there is no prohibition for it to make financial provisions to procure equipment on priority basis.This can be done by the State by showing its strong will and not only by adopting a mechanical approach or by following a usual approach of red tapism.”

The court also clubbed another petition pointing to the incident of school children being made to to manually clean toilets by the school authorities.

Case Title: The Registrar General AND Union of India & Others

Case No: WP 676/2024