Migrants can’t be made to pay for travel: Apex court
Court asks state governments to arrange food as workers await transport
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court finally intervened to protect the interests of stranded migrant workers on Thursday, issuing a seven-point interim order that said it was the job of the state to provide them food and transport and that they cannot be charged for their travel, and asking the Union government, represented by solicitor general Tushar Mehta, a volley of questions on the logistics of ferrying workers back home on trains and buses, including the time they have to wait for transport. The court also remarked that no state can refuse to take back migrant workers.
The apex court’s intervention came two days after it took suo motu (on its own) cognisance of the travails of migrant workers, around two months after it seemed to buy Mehta’s contention that there wasn’t a single migrant worker on the roads walking back home, and 12 days after it said it couldn’t prevent migrants from taking to the roads to walk back home or monitor their movements.
“No fare either by train or by bus shall be charged from any migrant workers. The railway fare shall be shared by the States as per their arrangement as submitted by the learned Solicitor General and in no case any fare should be asked or charged from any migrant workers by the States and the Railways,” the interim order said.
A three-judge bench of the court headed by justice Ashok Bhushan heard the case through video conference and also backed a uniform policy in order to do away with any kind of confusion in dealing with the migrant crisis.
In a two-and-a-half -hour hearing, it posed a series of questions to Mehta on various aspects.
Migrant workers, many left jobless and homeless after their workplaces or work sites shut during the ongoing lockdown imposed on March 25 to fight the spread of the coronavirus disease, have struggled to get home. In the absence of any public transport, many started walking or cycling back home in March. Some were turned away at state borders and housed in migrant worker camps; others managed to slip through borders. It was only in late April that the home ministry came up with a protocol to transport them by buses. Soon after, on May 1, the rail ministry announced Shramik Special trains for them. Since then, and till May 27, Mehta told the court, around 3,700 such trains have run, transporting five million people back home. But many are still awaiting trains. Some do not have the documentation to register for them.
There has also been confusion over who pays for the tickets (some migrants HT’s reporters have spoken to have paid out of their pocket). And the Centre and the states have scrapped over the trains.
The return migration has been peppered with tragic incidents — migrants have died on road accidents; 16 were run over by a goods train; and according to news reports on Thursday, at least nine people died on Shramik Special trains in the past 48 hours. In the court, Mehta suggested those walking had been misguided into doing so by some people.