NEW DELHI: A day after the Centre allowed movement of migrant workers and directed states and Union territories to use sanitised buses to transport them, many states including Bihar, Punjab, Rajasthan and Telangana have demanded that special trains be deployed as it is very difficult to operate buses for long-distance travel.
Telangana Animal Husbandry Minister T Srinivas Yadav went a step ahead and asked the Centre to bear the full cost of transportation of migrant workers. The Maharashtra government, too, made similar suggestions saying the travel cost should be either borne by the central government or by the native states of the migrant workers.
According to sources, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which is supervising the Covid-19 shutdown across the country, is likely to take a call on this soon.
Meanwhile, sources also said the railway ministry has already lined up a plan to operate 400 special trains, if necessary.
Railway officials said the number of trains can be scaled up to even 1,000 and that the same has been communicated to the MHA.
To ensure social distancing, only 1,000 people would be carried in each trip against the usual 1,950 persons.
Railway officials said the plan was drafted soon after the Centre relaxed lockdown rules to allow stranded people to reach their homes.
The officials also shared the view that sending such large numbers of people by buses for long-distance travel may not be a good option though it can prove to be a temporary relief.
Rajasthan has transported around 26,000 people to the borders of Madhya Pradesh by buses, as per MHA’s directive. And another 2,000 to the Haryana border. Migrants from Gujarat will also be sent back. Most labourers had come looking for work during the harvest season, officials said.
While Punjab and Rajasthan CMs Amarinder Singh and Ashok Gehlot wrote to the PM requesting operation of trains, Bihar’s deputy CM Sushil Modi made an appeal through Twitter.
The Bihar Deputy CM said approximately 27 lakh migrants, students and other people from the state are estimated stranded in different parts of the country and it won’t be easy to bring them back in a very short period.
He appealed the Centre to run some pairs of special non-stop trains to bring migrants and others home amid the lockdown.
He said, “Bihar will welcome all of them upon their homecoming but it would not be practical to bring them back from distant places by buses because of both the distances between Bihar and those places and safety seasons like social distancing,” he said.
According to sources in the Bihar government, around 5 lakh students, migrants and others are stuck in Delhi alone. Similarly, 2.68 lakh people are stuck in Maharashtra, over 1 lakh in Karnataka,1.88 lakh in UP, 2.96 lakh in Haryana, over 2 lakh in Gujarat among others. Till date, 1.80 lakh migrants and others have already returned in Bihar.
On Thursday, the Punjab CM directed all Deputy Commissioners to prepare state-wise data of migrant labourers to coordinate their movement, even as he urged PM Modi to arrange for point-to-point special trains for the transportation of such workforce.
Ludhiana alone had over 7 lakh migrant labourers, with the whole of Punjab having over a million of them, he said.
In Maharashtra, over 5L migrant are currently stranded in the state. A minister said it will cost the state exchequer not less than Rs 200 crore to transport the migrants. The UP government issued directives to officials to keep the quarantine centres and shelter homes ready to accommodate at least 10 lakh people.
With inputs from Patna/Mumbai/Lucknow/Chandigarh/Hyderabad/Jaipur