27L migrants back in UP: Govt

LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh government has brought back around 27 lakh migrant workers from various states with the assistance of the railways on the instructions of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, additional chief secretary, home, Awanish Kumar Awasthi said at a press conference here on Thursday.

The migrant workers were not charged for travel as the state government deposited their train fare with the railways, he said.

As many as 1551 trains brought the migrants back to UP from various states. Gujarat, Punjab, Telangana, Delhi, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Haryana governments informed the UP government that a majority of the migrants had returned to the state and only a handful were left, he said. Workers were still being brought by special trains from Maharashtra and Kerala, he said. Ninety-three intra-state trains were run from Jhansi, Mahoba, Agra, Mathura, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Noida, Moradabad, Aligarh, Prayagraj, Kanpur and Varanasi to transport the workers from one city to another, he said.

In the last week of April, the Uttar Pradesh government launched the operation to bring back migrant workers stranded in other states due to the Covid-19 lockdown, he added.

The migrants were transported by bus from the neighbouring states of Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand and brought back by trains from distant states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Goa, Tripura, Chhattisgarh and Punjab, he said.

The migrant workers were sent to home quarantine after screening. They were given ration kits and Rs 1,000 for sustenance.

The state government is in touch with them through the chief minister’s helpline, gathering regular feedback, he said.