The Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) has announced that it is organising a demonstration on Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 3 p.m. at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to protest against continued government apathy towards sewer and septic tank deaths across country and its attempts to fudge the actual data.
In a press release issued today, August 3, the SKA has raised the following key issues:
A staggering 593 persons have been killed in sewer and septic tanks, from January 2021 to date (July 2026) but Government has reported only 332 such deaths to the parliament. The SKA has demanded to know
- Why the remaining 261 deaths are being concealed.
- SKA data shows 47 deaths in 2021, 93 in 2022, 102 in 2023, 117 in 2024 and 121 sewer and septic tank deaths in 2025.
- This year alone, 2026, in just 7 months from January to July 2026, 113 persons have been killed in sewer and septic tanks all over the country.
- In the month of July 2026 itself, 15 persons were killed.
Strongly criticising the dismissive and arrogant attitude of the government that, the SKA alleges is “concealing figures”, the SKA also states that this attitude extends to labelling these figures of lives lost as “mere workplace accidents.” Instead of taking policy decisions outlines clearly in the 2013 law to abolish the abhorrent practice, the SKA states that “the government is only focussed on obscuring the truth.”
Hence, women, youth, workers engaged in cleaning sewer and septic tanks and families of those who were killed, will gather at Jantar Mantar on August 4, 2026 at 3 p.m. to demand that the Prime Minister should accept full responsibility for “these deaths and to constitute a Parliamentary Standing Committee inquiry into these killings. Government should present a timebound national plan for the immediate stop to sewer and septic tank deaths.”
Read Citizens for Justice & Peace’s legal primer on the laws periodically passed to abolish this abhorrent practice –that remain grossly unimplemented—here and here. More on the efficacy of a law to ban a practice where, tragically, local government bodies remain the main practioneers/ offencers may be read here.