New Delhi: In the cleaning of nearly 13 lakh insanitary dry toilets across the country, human beings and animals play an almost equal role, the Supreme Court was told on Monday. In what could deal a severe blow to the sanitation claims of successive governments, petitioner NGO ‘Safai Karmachari Andolan’ culled out data from the 2011 census report to inform the court that 4.97 lakh dry toilets were “serviced by animals” while another 7.94 lakh were serviced manually. With the government introducing a bill to prohibit employment of manual scavengers in Parliament on Monday, it would be left to animals — pigs and dogs — to clean dry toilets in the rural areas. Appearing for the NGO, senior advocate P S Narasimha and advocate K Parameshwar informed a bench of Justices Swatanter Kumar and S J Mukhopadhaya that of a total 24.6 crore households in India, over 26 lakh toilets were termed insanitary as they discharged excreta directly into open drains (13.14 lakh toilets) or were cleaned manually or serviced by animals (12.91). The census figures showed Delhi had 583 toilets cleaned by manual scavengers and 633 ‘serviced by animals’. There are no surprises in the list of poor performers, Uttar Pradesh has unsanitary toilets (80,291) “serviced by animals”.