Manual scavenging has been the national shame; it is not only hazardous but also challenges the fundamentals of human dignity. In the year 1993 for the first time, a law was enacted to curb this inhuman practice in India. Later in the year 2013, a new legislation was enacted as the previous enactment was proved to be ineffective and incompetent to deal with the menace of manual scavenging. Even after 27 years from the enactment of the first law prohibiting manual scavenging, the law seems ineffective as 284 deaths were recorded between 2016 and 2019 due to the practice of manual scavenging, in 2019 alone, 110 deaths were reported. While the reports from international organizations indicates that the practice has gone underground in India, little or no heed is paid. Recently, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the security of these scavengers is again under discussion. The question which the author tries to pose in this paper is not why there are deaths but why there are manual scavengers at the first place in India. Recently, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has proposed amendments to the existing statute but this proposal has been kept away from public scrutiny leaving no scope for discussions on the same. This paper is an attempt to highlight the flaws in the existing legislation and to compare it with the proposed amendment.