New Delhi: Even after the apex court clarified in its order on June 9 that trains to ferry migrant workers must be made available within 24 hours of states raising a demand for the same, delays, owing to the positions taken by respective states, were still occurring.
The issue is now impacting nearly a 1,000 listed migrants from Bihar who are stranded in Delhi and are in dire need of assistance as many of them have also surrendered their rooms or homes.
Raising the issue, Mithu Jain, the advocate-on-record for NLS Migrants Mazdoor Program – the intervenors in the Supreme Court in the matter of the migrant workers’ crisis – wrote to solicitor general Tushar Mehta on June 21, seeking his assistance in sending the stranded migrant workers home urgently.
In the letter, Jain recalled how the Supreme Court had taken notice of the plight of migrants who needed to reach their homes. The apex court’s order of June 9, Jain noted, “specifically states that trains would be requisitioned within a 24 hour period, and that details would be publicized through newspapers, television and other media.”
‘Over 1,000 people stranded, have left rented homes’
However, Jain lamented, that the many migrants were still not being ferried home. “Despite the above order, there are large numbers of citizens from Bihar who seek to get home from Delhi, who were asked to come to the station on 18th June and were then turned away from the trains of the day,” she said in the letter.
Also read: Delhi: Chaos as Nearly 200 Migrant Workers Who Got Messages to Board Trains Left Abandoned
Jain further pointed out that “now, despite requests having been made from several quarters, there is no movement on a train being requisitioned for these 1000 migrants from Bihar who have been stranded. As they have left their rented homes, they have no other avenue but to board a train as soon as possible.”
List of all migrants attached to the plea
In her letter, Jain also attached the list of nearly 1,000 migrant workers, with their addresses and phone numbers, who needed to be sent home urgently. Recalling how the SG had earlier forwarded a similar request for a train from Thane to Haldwani, which resulted in the same being arranged within three hours, the advocate again urged for his intervention.
After Mehta responded to the letter that asked her to “be in touch with the State Government authorities”. “State Government will requisition the train,” Mehta wrote. Jain then followed up with the Railways, National Informatics Centre and other concerned authorities for the matter.
Forwarding them the list of migrants, Jain wrote that they were “waiting to go to Bihar from Delhi”. Jain also noted that the program she represented was involved in “a lot of ground work to send migrants home across the country” and was willing to assist the authorities in any manner required for achieving this objective.
Another group had arranged three buses to help migrants return
Earlier, on June 20, The Wire had reported that a support group, Migrant Travel Support, had sent nearly 150 migrant workers to Bihar after arranging money and three buses as the workers were abandoned by the authorities after the trains were full.
The group that has been working to provide authorities with lists of migrant workers and facilitating their travel home by assisting in the documentation at the screening centres, intervened after three trains for Bihar left on June 18 without workers who had been messaged the previous day by the railways and called to the centre.
Also read: PM Launches Employment Scheme for Migrant Workers From Poll-Bound Bihar
Co-founder of the group Chandrajeet told The Wire on June 19 that the railways generally provide a train, which usually has the capacity to ferry 1,600 people, when a list of around 1,200-1,300 could be made available. As on that day, he said, the group had 800-900 on its rolls.