Referring to the ‘Shramik Special’ trains, the Home Minister said that the Centre has facilitated more than two lakh migrants workers to reach home. He added that workers from West Bengal are also eager to go back.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah. (Photo: Twitter | @AmitShah)
Union Home Minister Amit Shah in a letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, expressed his dismay over the state government stonewalling efforts by the Centre to facilitate transportation of migrant labourers back to the state.
Shah said that the West Bengal government is not allowing trains with migrants to reach the state, further creating hardship for the labourers and termed the act as “injustice” towards Bengali workers.
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“West Bengal government is not allowing trains with migrants reaching the state. We are not getting expected support from West Bengal. The state government is not allowing trains to reach. This is injustice for West Bengal migrant labourers. This will create further hardship for them,” Shah said in his letter to Mamata.
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Referring to the ‘Shramik Special’ trains being run to facilitate the transport of migrant workers from different parts of the country to various destinations, the Home Minister said that the Centre has facilitated more than two lakh migrants workers to reach home. He added that workers from West Bengal are also eager to go back.
Meanwhile, TMC leader Derek O’Brien has accused Amit Shah of being biased with the BJP-ruled states with regard to stopping the movement of migrant labourers.
“The Home Minister is writing so many letters to Bengal but nothing was done in Karnataka when the CM stopped the movement of migrant labourers. Later he had to revoke the decision. The Uttar Pradesh government has waived off all labour laws but, no letters were written to them,” said O’Brien.
He further alleged that the Centre was responsible for the rail mishap in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad.
On Friday, an MHA had informed that the Railways has run 222 ‘Shramik Special’ trains for the movement of stranded persons and more than 2.5 lakh people have benefited from the facility so far.
The Centre and West Bengal government have been at loggerheads over the Coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier on Thursday, the Home Ministry in a strongly-worded letter to the Mamata government had said that West Bengal has the highest rate of COVID-19 fatalities, low testing and worrying instances of attacks on frontline workers fighting the Coronavirus crisis.
“The response to COVID-19 in the state of West Bengal is characterised by a very low rate of testing in proportion to the population, and a very high rate of mortality of 13.2 per cent for the state, by far the highest for any state,” the Central government said.
“This is a reflection of poor surveillance, detection and testing in the state. There is also a need to increase random testing in crowded clusters,” Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said in a two-page letter to West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha.
Bhalla’s letter came after reports submitted by two Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCTs), which were sent to Kolkata and Jalpaiguri districts on April 20 and returned on Monday.
The IMCT deputed to the state had noted discrepancies in the number of Coronavirus cases reported by the government in its medical bulletins and its communications with the Central government.
The Union Health Ministry also revised West Bengal’s death toll on its website combining two figures put out by the state – one, who died of Coronavirus and the other, that linked deaths due to comorbidities.
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