Chaos reigns supreme after sealing of UP borders
LUCKNOW: Hours after the state government ordered sealing the borders to stop migrants entering the state on foot, cycles or trucks, hundreds of workers stranded at state borders were in a tizzy on Sunday, caught off guard by the sudden decision.
Also, a 16-year-old youth, who was part of a group of migrants trying to walk to Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh from Mumbai, collapsed in Kanpur on Sunday morning and died. Salahuddin Khan, the brother of the youth, said he was exhausted and did not get enough food for the past two days. Kanpur police said the youth had high fever. Policemen had taken him to the defence hospital in Harjinder Nagar but he died before he could be admitted.
One more migrant worker, Vinod, 50, from Maharashtra died while walking his way back to his village in Hardoi. He was just three km from his village when he collapsed and died on Kannauj-Hardoi border on Sunday. According to other migrants, he hadn’t had anything but biscuits and water since he left Mumbai in a truck on May 14 and arrived early Sunday morning.
Chaos reigned supreme and long queues of trucks and other vehicles were seen in almost all 13 districts of UP sharing borders with Delhi, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh as well as some nonbordering districts.
The decision came after the death of 26 migrant workers in Saturday’s road accident in Auraiya district. The authorities ordered to seal the borders after chief minister Yogi Adityanath ordered them to stop migrants travelling dangerously on foot, cycles, or trucks and arrange food and provide buses for their home journey.
However, the decision was a rude shock to the migrants, many of whom had made a long and arduous journey to reach home. They also became restive as many were close to their destinations. They angrily asked, “We travelled over 1,000 kms with little to eat and drink in this scorching heat and now when our homes are barely hundred kms away, we are being told we can’t move ahead.”
In Saharanpur, over 3,000 migrant workers who arrived at the UP border from Punjab and Haryana came out on roads and created ruckus over delay in arranging transport for their journey home. The migrants were mostly from Bihar and around 300 from different districts of east UP. Police used mild force to quell them and to pacify them, announcements were made that buses and trains were being arranged.
Senior superintendent of police (SSP), Saharanpur, Dinesh Kumar P said trouble erupted after rumours among the migrants at Radha Swami Satsang Ashram on Ambala Road that they would be held back there for 2-3 months. He said they were later told that already 1320 migrants were being sent through a train and buses were also being arranged. He said the situation was now under control.
In Jhansi, a long queue of trucks carrying migrant workers was seen at UP and MP border. The visuals from Jhansi district showed policemen asking migrants to get off trucks and cycles. The police also assured to arrange buses for their journey inside the UP borders but the migrants were not ready to listen and shouted slogans against the state government and police.
“There was chaos due to confusion among migrants that we were not allowing their entry but later they were told that the administration was arranging buses for their safe journey. The matter was sorted out shortly after which they were taken to a nearby shelter home and later boarded on buses to their destinations,” said SP City Jhansi Rahul Srivastava.
At Agra and Mathura border,
migrants entering the state from Rajasthan’s Bharatpur and Dholpur borders were agitated over the interruption of their onward journey. A group resorted to ruckus and arson, setting afire a garbage dump. The situation was controlled when senior Mathura district administration officials arranged buses for their onward journey.
Similarly, long queues of trucks and trolleys ferrying migrants, apart from some on bicycles, were seen in other bordering districts like Gautambuddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Baghpat, Shamli, Lalitpur and Mahoba. Chaos was also reported from some nonbordering districts like Lucknow, Kanpur, Unnao, and Fatehpur when migrants’ onward movement was interrupted.
DGP SAYS
Director general of police (DGP) HC Awasthy said the chaos was caused at some borders due to unprecedented turn out of migrants. He, however, added that the chaos was defused in 2-3 hours after the migrants were explained that they would get buses and trains for their safe onward journey. He said the aim of sealing the borders was to ensure safety of migrants travelling dangerously on foot, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, and trolleys and not to interrupt their movement.
ACS HOME SAYS
Additional chief secretary, home, Awanish Awasthi said the state government had decided to run trains from the border districts to ferry migrants. He said trains from Jhansi, Mahoba, Agra, Mathura, NOIDA, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Saharanpur and Prayagraj were likely to start from Sunday morning. He said the UPSRTC deployed 10,000 buses and districts magistrates had been told to hire private buses. The state government had sent a request to the Railways to operate shuttle trains between Kanpur- Varanasi via Prayagraj, he added.