In the recent exercise, state governments, tasked with verifying 54,929 manual scavengers identified across 170 select districts in stage one of the counting process, have confirmed involvement of only 25,015 people in the job in the final verification stage.
New Delhi: State governments have denied the existence of more than half the number of people identified as being involved in manual scavenging in the course of a Central government survey to arrive at an official count of people engaged in this long-outlawed practice.
In the recent exercise, state governments, tasked with verifying 54,929 manual scavengers identified across 170 select districts in stage one of the counting process, have confirmed the involvement of only 25,015 people in the job in the final verification stage.
As per official data, states such as Bihar, Haryana and Telangana denied having even a single person involved in manual scavenging —- 846, 1,221, and 288 people, respectively, had come forward in the chosen districts during stage one, declaring that they have been engaged in the practice.
Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Punjab confirmed only a fraction of the numbers that were enrolled during the first phase of counting. In MP, where 8,275 people were enrolled, almost 70 per cent were struck off the rolls by the state government and the number was brought down to 1,447. In UP, which at 18,913 people registered the most number involved in cleaning excreta manually, the government brought the figure down to 7,052.
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