LUCKNOW: After a three-day face-off, the Uttar Pradesh government on Monday accepted the Congress party’s offer to run 1,000 buses to transport migrant workers to their native places across the state.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, on Saturday, had written a letter to UP CM Yogi Adityanath requesting him to allow the party to run buses to ferry the migrants.
Responding to Priyanka’s letter, UP Additional chief secretary, home, Awanish Awasthi informed her though a letter on Monday that the state government had accepted the proposal. He asked the Congress leader to submit details of 1,000 buses along with the names and details of the drivers and conductors so that their services could be taken to ferry the migrant workers.
Congress claimed that it is preparing the list and would provide the details soon. “We welcome the state government’s decision. We have the details of the buses. As the state government has sought information on the drivers and conductors, we will provide them at the earliest,” said Congress legislature party leader Aaradhna Mishra.
The buses, belonging to Rajasthan State Road Transport department, will be run by the Congress and the party will bear the entire expenses incurred. Vadra, through a tweet, thanked CM Adityanath and assured that her party will stand with those migrant workers affected by the coronavirus and lockdown.
While allowing the Congress party to run the buses, UP CM office tweeted four posers for the Congress leader calling the party’s offer as a fake concern. Four posers were put out for Priyanka asking her if Congress was so moved by the sufferings of the migrants and that they had 1,000 buses, then why the migrants were stuffed in trucks while being ferried from Rajasthan and Maharashtra to UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
The Congress general secretary was also asked if she would own up the death of migrants in Auraiyya accident where one fateful truck was coming from Rajasthan and the other from Punjab carrying the migrants.
In the third poser, it is said that the list of the buses and the migrants to be ferried by them should immediately be provided to the state authorities so that the help offered by the party could be extended to the needy. She has also been asked as to why the Congress-ruled states did not make arrangement to send the migrants by train to UP, the way UP has made arrangements to bring them by trains.
Prior to this, Vadra had been launching an attack on the Yogi government through a series of tweets accusing it of playing politics over migrants in this hour of agony and distress. She had even claimed that the UP government had failed to make enough arrangements for the safe transportation of the migrants.
Meanwhile, BJP termed the COngress offer “a cheap, political drama”. “Instead of making arrangements to bring migrants directly from their party-ruled states to UP, they got the buses stationed at UP border. It’s merely a political drama of the Congress,” said UP BJP spokesman Chandramohan.