Hyderabad: Using the special shramik trains permitted by the government, a train carrying around 250 migrants from Bihar reached the Lingampally railway station. Workers from over the country have been able to now travel back to their home states during the coronavirus caused lockdown. These workers were hailing from Khagaria in Munger division.
The workers who were working in rice mills of Telangana reached Lingampalli station on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
According to East Central Railway (ECR), the train departed from Khagaria in Bihar at 3.45 a.m. on Thursday. ECR officials said the train was operated at the request of the state government. The clarification was made when the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Kumar Jha tweeted to the railway minister, wanting to know under whose order the train was being run.
PM Narendra Modi had said that several states want Bihari migrant labour to stay.
“The Karnataka government recently handed cash and food incentives to Bihari migrant labourers to ensure they do not leave,” he said. “Punjab CM Amarinder Singh had telephoned Bihar CM Nitish Kumar stating that he would take care of Bihari labourers there as the state relied heavily on them for harvesting. So far, not a single train has come from Punjab.”
Bihar Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi told that the workers were keen to head to Telangana as they are paid Rs 1,200 a day, instead of the meager Rs 300 a day they earn in Bihar.
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao had said on May 5 that the trains carrying migrant workers to Bihar will arrive with 20,000 to 25,000 workers from Bihar who were working in rice mills in Telangana.
Last month, Rao had urged the Bihar government to send back the workers to Telangana. More than 90 per cent of the workers in rice mills were Bihari migrants. “These workers, who load and unload the rice trucks, had gone to Bihar for Holi and are stranded there due to the lockdown,” the chief minister had said.
He had Rao stated that if required he would ask the Centre to arrange a few special trains to help the Bihari migrant labourers return.
The chief minister said as Telangana was procuring record 1.05 crore tons of paddy from farmers at designated procurement centres in villages in view of the lockdown, the task can’t be completed without the labourers in Bihar, who load and unload the trucks.
As the paddy harvest from the farmers was at a staggering record of 1.05 crore ton, the labourers stuck in Bihar were needed for the loading and unloading in the trucks. This was at the assigned procurement centres in villages because of the lockdown.
The PM also said that a large number of the people categorized as migrant labour had permanently shifted to the places they work from their actual place of residence.
“The majority of Bihari migrant labourers in Delhi are permanently settled there and would not like to return,” Modi said. “In Mumbai, Bihari migrant labour consists of 30 per cent of the work force. The remaining 70 per cent is from UP. It is a different matter that all of them are called bhaiyas and presumed to be Biharis”
The railways had announced to run 40 special trains to different states from Telangana to ship the migrant labourers to their respective destinations during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Meanwhile, a second train had started from the Lingampally station in Hyderabad to reach Bihar with 1240 workers on May 5th. Another special train from Hyderabad has reached MP with 1,000 migrant workers.
