More than 1.14 crore workers returned to their native places during the lockdown, the Union Labour Ministry the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. The Ministry said Uttar Pradesh saw the highest reverse migration with more than 30 lakh workers going back to their villages followed by Bihar and West Bengal that received 15 lakh and 13 lakh migrants, respectively.

Union Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar claimed in his reply that most of the workers have gone back to their original or other workplaces and “engaged themselves in productive employment”. The only information the Centre has about the deaths of migrants was from Madhya Pradesh, where 17 workers died when a train rammed onto them while they were walking over the rail lines.

The Ministry said it had set up 20 control rooms to record the grievances of workers. “During the lockdown, more than 15,000 complaints of the workers were resolved through these control rooms and due to the intervention of Ministry more than two lakh workers were paid their due wages amounting to about ₹295 crore,” the reply said.

Replying another question, the Centre said it does not approve the estimates by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) that around 10 crore youngsters are searching for jobs. “Data captured in private domain are not referred in government sphere,” it said.

On the Indian Labour Conference, the tripartite body on labour issues, the Centre the next meeting could be held once the pandemic situation gets over.

“The 47th Session of the Indian Labour Conference was scheduled to meet on February 26 and 27, 2018, however, the same was postponed due to administrative reasons. Next meeting of the ILC would be possible after the normalisation of the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic crisis in the country,” the Centre said.

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