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.
In an order, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said buses shall be used for transport of such groups of stranded people and these vehicles will be sanitised and will have to follow safe social distancing norms in seating.
With lakhs of these workers stranded on highways and inter-state bus terminus, the government stepped in and asked states and union territories to immediately set up relief camps for migrant workers and others who are returning to their home states or trying to do so during the nationwide lockdown period.
'What is going on is the under counting of the migration population in urban areas.' 'It has been going on in the last few censuses.'
Uttam Ghosh asks why the PM Cares fund could not have paid for the train tickets of migrant workers on their way home when the government flew Indians stranded in different parts of the world for free!
All of them were sent to a shelter for medical examination and a bus was being organised for their further transit, he said. A video of workers emerging from the small hole of the cement-mixer in the presence of police has gone viral on social media.
Speaker Awadh Bihari Chaudhary took a grim note of the unruly behaviour of some of the BJP MLAs who had entered the well and placed chairs on the table of the reporting staff.
Daily wagers are running out of resources, including ration and cash, and the state governments might not be able to sustain their needs for a longer period of time, given the lockdown has already been extended until May 3.
A controversy erupted on Monday after several opposition parties demanded that migrant workers should not be charged for the train tickets. While the Congress offered to pay for them, the Bharatiya Janata Party said the railways was already providing subsidised tickets bearing 85 percent of the travel costs.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led central government will use the unorganised workers database - e-Shram portal - to provide the benefits of various government programmes to the nearly 300 million workers over the next five years, if it is voted to power for the third consecutive term in the upcoming general elections. "We have registered unorganised workers on the e-Shram platform. "We will reach out to the e-Shram registered 'shramik bandhu' and help them avail the benefits of various government programmes that they are eligible for," the manifesto of the party read.
24 migrant workers were declared dead on Saturday early morning when a trailer truck carrying sacks of lime along with people rammed into the back of a stationary truck with many migrant workers sitting in it near a roadside eatery on the national highway in Auraiya.
'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'
He also rejected reports that have hinted possible increase in coronavirus cases due to migrants and asked, "Did corona not spread at places where migrants were not there?"
The labourers said there was no point in staying back in Gujarat without any income.
A government official in Lucknow said Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed grief over the incident and announced an ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the deceased migrants and Rs 50,000 to the seriously injured.
'They mean business, but business as usual is unacceptable to them'
Unless controlled and contained, given the untested belief that the north Indian labour support and follow the Hindutva kind of political ideology, there is a potential in terms of ideological clashes with their Dravidian brethren in the local neighbourhoods, and it all escalating into violence, especially during election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The ministry of home affairs on Wednesday issued a fresh set of guidelines to let migrant workers, students, tourists and pilgrims stranded in different parts of the country to get back home.
Qatar's construction industry is rife with abuse of migrant workers who are "treated like cattle" and live in squalid accommodation exposed to overflowing sewage, Amnesty International said in a report on Sunday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a scathing attack on the TMC, accusing them of prioritizing vote-bank politics over national security and Bengali identity by promoting infiltration. He also highlighted the BJP's vision for a developed and prosperous Bengal, promising a clean break from the past.
Gandhi noted that lakhs of migrants continue to walk hundreds of kilometres to reach back their homes without food, water, medicines and cash. She also accused the central government and the Railways of completely ignoring the demands made by the Congress for ensuring the safe and free travel of migrant workers and labourers to their homes.
On Thursday, the government wrote to Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha conveying it's decision and seeking their consent for receving the workers, official sources said.
'The long term strategy is that this government wants to create a second class citizen list.'
Dominic Xavier is puzzled by the government revelation that it has no idea how many migrants died during the long and dangerous march home.
A court in Kerala has sentenced five men from Uttar Pradesh to life imprisonment and an additional 40 years in prison for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl from Kerala five years ago. The accused, who were migrant workers residing near the victim's home, were involved in the crime that occurred in 2020. They enticed the girl with the promise of a SIM card and then subjected her to sexual assault at various locations. The court also directed the convicts to pay compensation to the victim.
Justices Arif S Doctor and Somasekhar Sundaresan held there was nothing in the MCC that would interfere with the Board's ongoing activities.
Shyel Trehan, an alumna of the 2000 batch of the National Law School, was one of the organisers who managed this near impossible achievement.
Officials of the Transport Department, bus drivers and conductors were contacted on Friday night to help the people who were stranded in Noida, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar and Aligarh, among other places, he said.
All the 26 people working there were from the Malda district of West Bengal.
As the world awaits the end of the global pandemic, rural Bengal might be witnessing a recession unfolding in bits and pieces. With factories and tea gardens closing down, agricultural income falling and storm Aila ravaging a large part of deltaic West Bengal in 2010, migration gradually became a norm.
In one case, the folks at SWAN discovered that of the Rs 1,500 they'd transferred as relief in the account of a stranded worker, the bank had deducted Rs 800 as penalty for not having minimum balance!
"The Right to Life as guaranteed by Article 21...gives the right to every human being to live a life of dignity with access to at-least bare necessities of life. To provide food security to impoverished persons is the bounden duty of all States and Governments," the top court observed while issuing a slew of directions on a plea of three activists.
The migrant worker, namely Ariful Islam, 26, was arrested by Arthunkal police on August 23 for allegedly sexually assaulting the girl after trespassing into her house on the same day.
Glimpses from around the world that will make you smile and cry.
'I asked her whether she stood first. 'Yes Baba' was her reply. Her mother was crying in joy.'
The IAF C30J aircraft is carrying the bodies of the Indians and of them 31 were received at the airport in Kochi.
The incident took place at Tumchi Nowpora of Pulwama district in South Kashmir when the labourer, Mukesh Kumar, was in the market to buy some vegetables.
Thousands of migrants were stranded in places across the country since the lockdown was enforced on March 25, many even attempting to walk home.
The group, comprising on 147 women and 20 men, were airlifted by an Air Asia chartered flight from Kochi to the Biju Patnaik International Airport in Bhubaneswar.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Tuesday said migrant workers from other states were responsible for the rapid spread of coronavirus in Maharashtra, which has been reporting a large number of new infections since the last few weeks.
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