Social Category Breakup

• Scheduled Castes: 60.3 percent or 92,089
• Scheduled Tribes: 10.5 percent or 16,077
• Other Backward Classes: 13.7 percent or 20,954
• General category: 10.7% or 16,329 workers

State and UT Level  

• Delhi and Goa show majority of waste pickers from General category
• In Delhi, 4,289 of over 6,500 workers were from General category (65.9%)
• In Goa, 729 of 1,286 workers were from General category (56.6%)
• West Bengal recorded 42.4 percent General category waste pickers

Related Data on Sanitation Workers

• About 89,000 sewer and septic tank workers enumerated so far
• 95.8 percent of them are men
• 859 deaths reported due to hazardous sewer and septic tank cleaning since 2014
• 43 deaths recorded in 2025 alone

(a) rehabilitate the homeless and destitute persons and provide them with suitable sources of livelihood 

(b) release the sex workers from their practice and provide them with alternative sources of livelihood 

(c) eradicate the practice of manual scavenging and rehabilitate the manual scavengers 

(d) release the bonded labourers from their bondage and rehabilitate them