Railway minister reacts to Mamata’s claim for 105 trains

Kolkata, 15 May(HS) : Strongly reacting to West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s yesterday’s announcement to run 105 trains from different parts of the country this month to bring back lakhs of stranded migrant workers from Bengal to their homes, Railway minister Piyush Goyal has suggested that the state government should in fact allow similar number of (105) trains everyday from other states to bring back all its stranded workers from elsewhere in the country.

Responding to the twitter message of the Chief Minister yesterday which said ‘towards our commitment to helping all our people stuck in different parts of the country and who want to return back to Bengal, I am pleased to announce that we have arranged 105 additional special trains’., the Railway minister  also through his official twitter handle said (in Hindi) that he was extremely happy that at last the West Bengal government has ‘woken up from its slumber’.

Moreover, he said, when thousands of migrant workers from West Bengal remained stranded in several states,the state government had allowed only 7 Shramik Special trains to enter into the state when as many as 400 odd trains ran in Uttar Pradesh for the same purpose.

In view of that I have requested the  state government to allow us to run more such trains and felt that in order to clear the entire rush the state needed 105 odd trains on daily basis and not for the whole month, Goyal said.

After the condition of hapless millions of migrant labourers in different parts of the state became viral in social media blaming both the Central and respective state government for doing very little or nothing to bring back the migrant workers of respective states to home,an intensive war of words began between the governments trying to shrug off their responsibilities.

While the Railway ministry blamed the Bengal government for remaining silent in formally requesting them,as per the norms,for the running of  more ‘Shramilk Special’ trains from different states including those from Rajasthan, Punjab, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala where more than 200,000 migrant workers from Bengal got stranded since the nationwide lockdown since 23 March, the state government on the other hand criticised the Railway ministry for running only two such trains from Rajasthan and Kerala a few days ago to bring back only about 4,000 workers,students and some stranded tourists from Ajmer  Sharif (Rajasthan) ,Thiruvananthatpuram (Kerala).

Later however, five more such trains reached Howarah station from some South Indian states before the Chief Minister finally decided to write to the Railway ministry to arrange several more trains for the state.

Accordingly altogether 105 such special trains for the hapless and stranded migrant workers have finally been arranged by the Railway Ministry to end the two month long untold miseries of a large number of workers in other states at its own cost.