Sule, citing Railway Ministry documents, said the largest number of Shramik Special trains -- 1033 -- were operated from Gujarat, followed by Maharashtra (817) and Punjab (429).
The Bharatiya Janata Party said on Monday the railways has subsidised 85 per cent of ticket fare for special trains being run to transport migrant workers and the state government has to pay the remaining 15 per cent, soon after the Congress attacked the central government over the issue.
The accident took place at Kolwan village around 3.30 am when the bus was on way from Solapur to Nagpur railway station where the labourers were supposed to board a Shramik Special train to reach their native places in Jharkhand, Additional Superintendent of Police Noorul Hasan said.
However, it will run special trains for migrants and others stranded across the country due to the ongoing lockdown.
Uttam Ghosh offers his take on how the migrants's plight has been aggravated by the erratic management of Shramik trains by the Indian Railways, headed by Railways Minister Piyush Goyal.
The SOP said the train schedule, protocols for entry and movement of passengers, services to be provided in coaches, and arrangements with states and UTs for booking of tickets shall be publicised by the MOR.
'The government there at one point did not even permit migrant labourers to return...we do not want to say anything against anyone but the situation there was not handled properly'
'No linen, blankets and curtains shall be provided inside the train. Passengers are advised to carry their own linen,' an order by the Railways said. The order also said that there would be no provision of 'tatkal' and 'premium tatkal' accommodation and there will be very few stoppages during the journey.
Railway traffic has dropped 32 per cent to 99.86 mt between April 1 and May 14, compared to the same time last year, while its revenue, too, dipped 41 per cent to Rs 9,094.38 crore.
The American-born Indian scholar, sociologist and human rights activist was well known for her writing on Dalits, OBCs and Adivasis.
These trains will be run as special trains from New Delhi station connecting Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi.
The railways said these trains will be "special trains run on the pattern of regular trains", covering tier 2 cities and also major state capitals like Mumbai and Kolkata.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday visited Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency, meeting activists held during protests against the amended Citizenship Act and accusing the government of acting against the Constitution.
The four-and-a-half-year-old son of Bihari migrants based in Delhi died at the railway station in Muzaffarpur on arrival by a 'Shramik Special' train, while his father desperately hunted for some milk he believed will save his child.
A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, SK Kaul and MR Shah took note of the submissions of the Centre and state governments on steps taken so far to mitigate the miseries of the migrant workers stranded across the country during the Covid-19 lockdown.
'It will take a long time for people's memory to be misled by a prime minister who is so arrogant and who refuses to acknowledge his own faults.'
Ferrying migrant workers back to their states would be the largest special service by any railway network in the world in one go. Here's how the transporter manages it.
A Mumbai Police official said the actor was stopped by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) when he reached the station on Monday night to meet some labourers, and added that they have not received any complaint so far in this connection. The migrant labourers were supposed to take the Shramik Special train from Bandra Terminus to Uttar Pradesh.
Migrants are no longer sure if they would be able to live by Modi's mantra of "Jaan Bhi Jahaan Bhi".
The apex court, which passed interim directions, said all migrant workers who are stranded at various places shall be provided food by concerned states and Union Territories (UTs) at places which shall be publicised and notified to them for the period they are waiting for their turn to board a train or a bus.
'Now, it feels like the darkness has descended again.'
Around 275,000 migrant labourers and their family members have returned to the state. According to the state government, this number could exceed 1 million by the end of this month. As the NDA government in Bihar is scheduled to face polls at the end of this year, providing livelihoods to these people is on the top Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's agenda.
'They say government is doing so much but ham to ab bhi yahi hain'
The migrants were ferried to their villages in sanitised buses arranged by the Jharkhand government to take them home after preliminary medical screening at the station, officials said.
Singh said India wants to maintain a friendly relationship with Pakistan.
He said though the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to expand its influence in the Trinamool Congress-ruled state, its goal is to rid West Bengal of the 'environment of terror'. "Bengal is the only state in the entire country where the culture of political violence is flourishing," he told the BJP's virtual 'Jan Samvad' rally.
Sharif Hashmi was traveling with her husband Haseen Hashmi along with her four-month-old child in a Shramik Special train from Belgaum to Gorakhpur on May 31. Her baby was crying as she did not get milk at any previous station. She asked help from the constable, the statement said. Yadav immediately bought a packet of milk from a shop outside the Bhopal Railway Station, but the train started moving.
For many the resumption of trains is a big boon, but some say it doesn't come without confusion and worries
Many of the tragedies occurred in the dark, which is when it is cooler to walk, and many people were caught in their sleep. The combination of no traffic and speeding vehicles has led to havoc, endangering the lives of those who found themselves without work or money in the coronavirus-induced lockdown and were frantic to get home, any which way.
The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 53,946, while 34,108 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, the ministry said.
Shah said not allowing trains to reach West Bengal is "injustice" to the migrant workers from the state.
To capture the information regarding movement of migrants and facilitate the smooth movement of stranded persons across the states, National Disaster Management Authority has developed an online dashboard namely, National Migrant Information System, on the existing NDMA-GIS portal
Kumar had registered for the Shramik Special train. Everyday, he hoped his phone will ring and he will be asked to come to the station. But, only his landlord's call came everyday asking when he would pay the due rent. Dejected with the wait, Kumar decided to go to the Gurgaon Railway Station where he was refused an entry.
As the mother still lay still, he wobbles away from her, announcements continuing in the background about the arrival and departure of trains that would bring in tens of thousands of people in a rush to get away from hunger and hardship they face in large cities that could sustain them no more.
Two days before the end of the fourth phase of the nationwide lockdown, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday announced a slew of relaxations, including reopening of shrines from June 1.
Accusing Rahul Gandhi of trying to "weaken" the country's resolve to fight COVID-19, the Bharatiya Janta Party said on Wednesday that the Congress leader has been acting in a "most irresponsible" manner and is trying to mislead the country with "falsehoods and misrepresentation of facts".
On the ground, rural medical infrastructure and more crucially, women's access to reproductive health services is practically non-existent in Uttar Pradesh, reports Geetanjali Krishna.
All special trains -- 15 pairs running on the Rajdhani routes since May 12 and 100 pairs of mail/express trains operating since June 1 -- will continue.
It said it will also allow reservation of reserved tickets from common service centres (CSC) and through ticketing agents with effect from Friday. The zonal railways have been instructed to decide and notify opening of reservation counters as per local needs and conditions, the order stated.
A day after opposition parties, including the Congress launched a scathing attack against the Union government and the railways for charging money from migrants for the travel, sources in the railways said the national transporter is spending around Rs 80 lakh per service for the special trains, and it has run 67 such trains carrying around 67,000 stranded migrants since May 1--- incurring an expenditure of over Rs 50 crore.