Overview
- The Safai Karmachari Andolan staged a high-profile event at the Press Club of India on Tuesday and brought sanitation workers from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir to present first‑hand testimony.
- SKA said it has compiled evidence from at least 46 districts that contradicts the central government’s 2024–25 survey reported to Parliament as finding zero cases of manual scavenging.
- Speakers at the event, including former Supreme Court judges, urged immediate identification and demolition of dry latrines, payment of compensation to affected workers and programs to replace manual labour with mechanical cleaning.
- Workers described lifelong forced labour, little or no pay, social exclusion and intergenerational harm, and SKA issued an ultimatum demanding eradication within a year under its 'India @ 80' campaign.
- The mobilisation revives long‑standing critiques that laws and court orders have failed because the practice is rooted in caste, patriarchy and poverty, and it raises pressure for fresh government surveys and concrete rehabilitation plans.