IT Correspondent
Mumbai, May 17 :
The first trains carrying migrant workers to Bihar and West Bengal, which had so far disallowed labourers to come back, departed on Saturday from Mumbai, after Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP president Sharad Pawar spoke to respective CMs to resolve the dispute.
The migrant workers from Bihar and West Bengal were stranded in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra since these states had not given clearance for their return. “We could not send trains to Bihar and West Bengal since these states did not allow it. As such Pawar and Thackeray spoke to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, to resolve the dispute, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said.
Notably, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal had on Thursday had hit out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for not allowing migrants to return and had appealed to all the states to give railways approval to run more trains.
On Saturday, a train carrying migrant workers to West Bengal and Bihar was flagged off. Pawar has also expressed the need to operate at least 10 trains daily each to West Bengal and Bihar. Thackeray has sanctioned Rs 55 crore from the chief minister’’s relief fund for sending these workers ad the ticket fare is not being sought from any worker,” Deshmukh added.
He said the Maharashtra government has so far transported about 2.45 lakh migrant workers to their respective home states, by running 191 special trains services till now, amidst the coronavirus-induced lockdown” Deshmukh said in a video message.
The trains are being run from parts of Maharashtra to Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh. As of now 3,71,310 migrant workers have been camped in 3,884 shelters in Maharashtra and the state government has being arranging for their food.
In the meanwhile additional 1.21 lakh migrant workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have sought permission from Pune collector to return to their native places and required clearance has been sought from both the states, Pune Collector Naval Kishore Ram informed officers during a video conference on Saturday. No sooner the clearance is received, arrangement will be made for special trains, in coordination with railways, he added.