On-ground mass transport has largely been the responsibility of the Centre-owned Indian Railways (IR). But, with little clarity on when IR will re-start services after the lockdown, States have started arriving at bilateral ‘equations’ to ensure safe passage for people to return to their hometowns — some with success, some without.
Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Himachal Pradesh have started arranging buses to ferry students back from Kota and Delhi. Odisha has spoken to Gujarat to get migrants back from Surat using buses. These are long routes, and in normal days train was the preferred mode of travel.
Meanwhile, desperate to head home, migrant workers, many of whom work in unorganised sectors, are jumping on to boats, covered trucks, parcel or goods trains, containers and even ambulances. Recalling how a worker tried to return to Odisha using an ambulance, Subroto Bagchi, the State’s Skill Development Minister, said last week that if people started doing this on a larger scale, the police would be pushed to check all ambulances, which could harm genuine patients. On Monday, Bagchi said that in just 48 hours, 4.86 lakh people had registered on Odisha’s portal expressing their desire to return.
Passenger train services were stopped following the nationwide lockdown that began on March 25 and further got extended till May 3. This hit migrant workers who were desperate to return home for multiple reasons — dearth of work, loss of earnings and fear of disease.
Stage set
Now, several States have started connecting with each other to get their respective migrants back, having readied quarantine centres and online registrations. For instance, Odisha, which has five lakh migrants outside of the State, has opened a portal where people wishing to return have to register.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik, for one, has started contacting various States on this. “We will make arrangements for people here...whether they return by trains, flights or boats,” he said in a video-conference with Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani. Gujarat offered to make available buses to drop migrant workers.
Various segments of IR have spoken about running special, unreserved trains, specially to get the stranded migrant workers back home, but nothing has been finalised yet. Maharashtra has requested special trains to ensure the workers stranded in the State reach home safely.
Till Monday afternoon, IR officials maintained that there were no plans or proposals to transport people back to their hometowns.