Lawyer, activist use social media to help migrants leave for MP

Sudhir Gupta, a lawyer from Palghar, and Dhawal Patel, a social worker, came to the rescue of 1,200 migrants who wanted to leave for their hometowns in Madhya Pradesh

Sudhir Gupta, a lawyer from Palghar, and Dhawal Patel, a social worker, came to the rescue of 1,200 migrants who wanted to leave for their hometowns in Madhya Pradesh after the government’s online booking system for transit pass went down due to overload. This was the first MP-bound train to leave from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which left Palghar on Sunday night and reached Meghnagar in Madhya Pradesh on Monday.

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As the online booking system couldn’t be accessed for two consecutive days, Gupta and Patel appealed to people on social media to contact them to manually make a list of migrants and then passed it over to the government authorities. The state government then got in touch with the MP government.

“We got information that the online system of the government was not working, so we decided to help. We appealed to the people on social media to contact us and got a huge response,” said Gupta. “Though only 1,200 passengers could board the train, we are preparing a second list for Madhya Pradesh,” said Patel.

The Madhya Pradesh government bore the fare expenses and did not charge the migrants, said Gupta. After the train reached Meghnagar on Monday, the MP government arranged buses to take the passengers to various districts, said Gupta.

An officer from Palghar collector’s office confirmed that the online system was overloaded with around 1.90 lakh applications from migrants from various states and hence needed to be shut for two days.

Meanwhile, on Monday afternoon, another train left for Jaunpur from Palghar carrying 1,200 migrants. However, the passengers had to pay ₹740 as fare, said Milind Kirtikar, station superintendent, Western Railway, Palghar.