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500 buses hired by Congress to transport migrants await permission from UP
The issue of providing transport to migrant workforce has is threatening to spiral into a stand off between the Congress party and the UP government
Five hundred buses hired by the Congress to ferry migrants to their home towns were stopped at Bahaj village in Bharatpur at the border of Mathura district on Sunday pending permission from the Uttar Pradesh government.
All India Congress Committee secretary in charge of UP, Zubair Khan, and Rajasthan’s minister of state for health Subhash Garg tried to contact the UP government for permission but in vain.
Khan said the party wanted to help the migrant workers in transit. “The buses are ready. We will start transporting the workers when we get permission,” he said.
He said party general secretary in charge of UP Priyanka Gandhi has offered buses at the expenses of the Congress party to UP government for taking migrants to their houses.
UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath ordered his officials on Thursday to ensure that no migrant labourer enters the state walking. A statement from his office said the state government was actively engaged in bringing them back safely.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, hundreds of migrants were seen travelling on trucks on the Jaipur-Agra national highway in Bharatpur. They were going to Bihar and Jharkhand.
Munsi Lal of Bihar said he was walking from Bhilwara in Rajasthan to his village in Bihar when the police ordered him to hop on to a truck at Kamalpura border in Bharatpur. Truck driver Raj Kishor said he was transporting goods from Rajgarh in Gujarat to Kolkata. “At Kherli Mod, police ordered me to also take migrants on the truck,” he said.
Congress general secretary and in charge of the party’s eastern UP affairs, Priyanka Gandhi urged the UP government to allow the buses to ferry migrants in the state, however, state minister Siddharth Nath Singh accused Priyanka of attempting to make political capital without understanding logistics.
