Mamata declares 105 trains for migrants, Centre says more needed

Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who has faced flak for going slow on the return of migrant workers, on Thursday announced her government has arranged 105 trains to bring them home over the next month even as railway minister Piyush Goyal said the state needed as many trains daily.

The Centre and West Bengal government have been at loggerheads over the return of migrants and the Covid-19 management. Banerjee on Monday accused the Centre of trying to gain political mileage amid the pandemic at the expense of her government.

“I am pleased to announce that we have arranged 105 additional special trains,” Banerjee tweeted and shared on social media details of their schedule.

Goyal responded to Banerjee’s tweet hours later. “I feel sad that while there is a need for 105 trains/day to bring back migrants to WB [West Bengal], the state is accepting only 105 trains over 30 days. I once again hope for the sake of Bengali brothers and sisters in different parts of the country that WB will accept them back with open arms,” he tweeted.

“Many migrants want to return to WB & if the State does not accept them then we may find more cases of migrants & even children walking for hundreds of kms & resorting to other dangerous means. WB should speed up setting up of adequate arrangements to receive their own migrants.”

Tamil Nadu-based writer Nityanand Jayaraman tweeted a video of a group of workers from Bengal starting for their homes on bicycles, nearly 1,700 km away.

Activist Anuradha Talwar, who has been working with stranded migrant workers, said migrants from Bengal were initially against walking or cycling home and preferred to wait. She added they were of late running out of patience.

In response to Goyal’s series of tweets, Trinamool Congress national spokesperson Derek O’Brien said : “The railway minister has been all but absent during this monumental crisis when millions of poor migrant workers have been abandoned. They’ve been left to fend for themselves, stuck across the country waiting for some help from the government to safely return to their homes and families. These people could have been moved in a matter of days.”