Hundreds of migrant workers demand to be sent back home immediately in Mangaluru

The workers, mostly from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand,stayed put at the station and refused to disperse, despite appeals by police, who rushed to the spot, to leave.

Hundreds of migrant labourers thronged the Railway station here on Friday after learning that the Karnataka governnment would be operating special trains to their home states and demanded that they be immediately sent back, police said.

Belongings of stranded people are seen as they arrive to board onto special trains from Bengaluru to Rajasthan, run by the state government, at Palace Grounds in Bengaluru. (ANI)

The workers, mostly from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand,stayed put at the station and refused to disperse, despite appeals by police, who rushed to the spot, to leave.

Police quoted the migrants as saying that they were stuck in the city without jobs, money and adequate food and that they were even willing to walk to their home states if the special trains were not operated immediately.

On Thursday, the Karnataka government decided to deploy special trains from May 8 to send back the workers to their homes and sought approval of nine states for the process.

They were informed that Karnataka intended to run two trains a day to these states till May 15 for ferrying the thousands of migrant workers, stranded in the city and other districts due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

The fresh move came two days after the government withdrew its request to the railways to run special trains for the migrants within hours of making it on Tuesday.

Eight special trains had ferried migrant labourers to their home states from the Bengaluru division before the cancellation.