The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the Centre to ensure free travel to stranded migrants to their home states by trains and buses even as the government contended that it is taking “unprecedented steps” to meet the challenging crisis during the Covid-19 lockdown.
A three-judge bench asked the solicitor general Tushar Mehta about the confusion over payment of travel fare of stranded migrant workers and said that they should not made to pay for their journey back home.
“Some isolated incidents” were being highlighted to portray the government’s efforts in bad light. Migrant workers were stopped from going home in the initial days of the lockdown to arrest the spread of the virus. Over 3,700 special trains had carried migrants since May 1. Nearly two lakh of them were transported to their homes everyday by 187 trains. Over 45 lakh workers and their families have been shifted through road.
Appearing for Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala, senior advocate A.M. Singhvi said the Centre still did not have a nationwide action plan to tally the exact number of migrant labourers stranded in various parts of the country. He said the government should work with the grass roots administrative mechanism, including the district and panchayats, to create lists accurately identifying the stranded workers.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal said migrant workers left government relief camps to walk home because of lack of “minimum standards” of food, water and shelter in them as required under the Disaster Management Act. “What food was provided to them? Pulses is not the answer. Where will they cook all this?” he said.
Senior advocate Indira Jaising said only 3% of the trains were being used now and there were four crore migrant workers waiting to go home.
