Rahul hits streets, meets stranded migrant workers

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday hit the streets meeting stranded migrant workers in South Delhi and questioning the economic package announced by the Modi government for them till now.

Mr Gandhi interacted for over an hour with the workers, who were walking all the way from Ambala in Punjab to Jhansi. Sources close to Mr Gandhi said he had an impromptu meeting with a group of 20 migrants, including women and children, walking from their work site near Ambala to their village near Jhansi.

Soon after he left, the Congress party claimed that the migrant workers were taken into preventive custody by the police.

Earlier addressing a press conference, Mr Gandhi said: “I would like to ask the Prime Minister to think about putting money directly into the bank accounts of our people. In the Congress Party, we had an idea called Nyay. Do Nyay temporarily, if you don’t want to do it permanently, do it temporarily. But, please start putting money into the small businesses, into the farmers, into the migrants’ bank accounts, because if we do not, we will have a catastrophic result,” he said.

Mr Gandhi who has time and again made suggestions on the economic front in the wake of the Covid-19 said that though he did not want to make a political statement, he has serious reservations about the nature of the package that the government has given. “I would like the government to reconsider. It is good that they have taken this step. It is not a bad step, but, the most important thing right now, is that we put money directly into the hands of our poor people”.

“What is going to come, if we do not do that, it is going to be much worse than what we have seen. It is going to overshadow the disease of Covid,” the former Congress president said.

He added that it was very important that the lockdown was opened intelligently and carefully without sacrificing the vulnerable people. “We cannot sacrifice our old people; we cannot sacrifice our people, who have diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, kidney disease. We have to protect them and it is the primary duty for everybody to do that”.