Cleanliness for one class of citizens can't be achieved by engaging others in slavery, says Bombay High Court

The court also directed the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai to declare 580 of its workers as permanent employees and extend all benefits to them.

Mumbai: The pursuit of cleanliness in a welfare state should not compromise the fundamental rights and dignity of workers and cannot be achieved at the expense of perceived 'slavery' of individuals, the Bombay High Court has ruled.

The judgement, made available on Thursday, was given by a single bench of Justice Milind Jadhav in November 2023.

The court directed the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) to declare 580 of its workers as permanent employees and extend all benefits to them.

The court was hearing a petition filed by MCGM challenging an order passed by the Industrial Tribunal directing it to create posts for 580 temporary workers.

The High Court, while dismissing the MCGM's petition, said quashing the tribunal's order would be a "travesty of justice".

The tribunal had directed the corporation to declare the 580 workers as permanent and extend all benefits to them. The court said the imperative duty of maintaining cleanliness for a specific group cannot be attained through the perceived 'slavery' of others.

The bench noted that the fundamental right of citizens to a clean environment cannot be achieved by subjugating the fundamental rights of the workers to basic human dignity.

The workers' union, 'Kachara Vahatuk Shramik Sangh' had sought the civic body to make 580 of its members permanent staffers. The 580 workers carry out work of sweeping and cleaning public roads and collection and transportation of garbage.

The bench noted that the civic body has a mandate to keep the city clean and the residents of the city, who pay taxes, have a fundamental right to a clean environment.

"This fundamental right and the mandatory duty cannot be achieved by subjugating the fundamental rights of the workers to basic human dignity. In a welfare state, cleanliness for one class of citizens cannot be achieved by engaging in 'slavery' of the others," the court said.

The court noted that these 580 workers provide the foundation on which the city functions but instead of acknowledging this and giving them the stability of a permanent tenure, the civic body has taken advantage of its dominant position to exploit the lowest strata of the community.

The workers' union had claimed these 580 workers belong to a marginalised section of society and have no access to bare minimum facilities. Some of them have been working with the civic body since 1996 without any benefits like medical and health insurance, the union added.

"While the permanent workers are accorded all the facilities and security of tenure, the working and living conditions of the 580 workers are pitiable. The way they have to live, the manner in which they are made to work is below human dignity," the High Court said.

It added that many of these workers get injured on duty while handling garbage, develop illnesses and are left to fend for themselves, with almost no medical care.

"They have to manually remove excrement, rotting animals, and ride on the trucks carrying garbage and rotting carcasses. One does not have to go through years of such sub-human existence to complain of exploitation," the court said.