New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday assured the Supreme Court that it would strive to bring in a new law to abolish manual scavenging across the country and peg it on right to dignity and life to make it mandatory for the states to implement it. Repeated adjournments sought by the Union government for getting the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012, had irked a bench headed by Justice H L Dattu so much that it had observed on last Friday that if the Bill was not getting through the legislative process, the government must bring in an ordinance to put an end to manual scavenging. On Tuesday, attorney general G E Vahanvati assured the bench of Justices Dattu and Ranjan Gogoi that the Centre was fully committed to an early passage of the Bill, which gave comprehensive definitions of ‘insanitary latrines’ and ‘manual scavengers’. The AG said, “The government will make an earnest request to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment to expedite its deliberations and present its report to the Lok Sabha at the commencement of the Budget Session and, thereafter make every effort to ensure that the law is enacted as expeditiously as possible.” The bench was hearing a plea on death of manual scavengers while cleaning manholes and sewer lines. It was alleged that these people are hired on daily wages and on their death the families get no compensation. Vahanvati said it took 19 years for the states to ratify the existing Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993. Wiser by the experience, the Centre has decided to take a route through entry 97 of the Central List for the proposed law to bind the states to follow the law, the AG said, “The states will have no choice but to accept. We are no longer dependent on the volition of the states. We are talking of human dignity enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. We are aware of it and whatever is needed will be done.”