3,000 migrants leave for home in two trains

Under strict supervision and tight security arrangements, the district administration on Wednesday sent 3,000 migrants to Bihar and Madhya Pradesh from the Gurugram

Under strict supervision and tight security arrangements, the district administration on Wednesday sent 3,000 migrants to Bihar and Madhya Pradesh from the Gurugram railway station in two special shramik trains.

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Relieved to finally leave for home, the migrants—men, women, children and the elderly—boarded the trains while following social distancing norms at the station under the supervision of the local police, the government railway police (GRP) and civil defence volunteers, officials said.

Hitesh Sharma, the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) Badshahpur, said that the exercise—including the registration of migrants, getting them to assemble in a centralised place, ferrying them in buses, making food packets for them for their journey, making security arrangements during their bus journey within the city, as well as at and around the railway station—involved the manpower of more than 500 personnel, including the local police, the GRP and the civil defence volunteers.

The police secured the railway station and the area around it and did not allow even the media to enter the station premises.

“This was done to make sure there is no unruly incident and no crowd gathers at the station. There are densely populated areas around the station and anybody can enter the station and board the train; we had to maintain law and order,” Sharma said, adding that the migrants’ first train for Tikamgarh left at 10.30am—one-and-a-half hours behind its scheduled time at 9.00am—with 1,400 migrants on board.

The second train left at 12.30pm for Madhubani in Bihar with 1,600 migrants.

Locals told Hindustan Times they had never witnessed such tight security around the railway station before.

SK Singh, a resident of Rajendra Park, said, “Our locality is adjoining the railway station. We were told the GRP personnel were deployed to enhance security.”

The Haryana government, however, has been discouraging the migrants who have been living here for years from going back to their hometowns, assuring them that activities in industries and other areas are slowly reopening in the city and their jobs are safe.

“Ram Bihari, a daily wage earner who hails from Jhansi, told us that he did not earn a single penny since the imposition of the lockdown. He was unable to feed his family and he saw no scope of earning in the current scenario. He told us he would return to Gurugram later,” an official who was part of the team that saw off the migrants at the railway station said.