Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has appealed to all or any states to allow the operation of migrant special trains in order that the stranded can reach range in subsequent three to four days.
The appeal comes each day after Home Minister Amit Shah wrote to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to permit such trains to run.
“As per the directions of Hon’ble PM @NarendraModi ji, Railways is fully ready to run 300 Shramik Special trains everyday at short notice since the last six days.
“I appeal to all or any the states to offer permission to evacuate and convey back their stranded migrants in order that we will get all of them back to their homes within the next 3-4 days itself,” Goyal tweeted on Sunday.
On Saturday the WB government claimed it had given clearance to eight trains to be run carrying its migrant home. Four of those trains, it said, were to depart on Saturday, which didn’t .
Senior railway officials say the national transporter features a capacity to frolic 300 trains per day ferrying around 20 lakh migrants during a maximum of 5 days.
However, they said, clearances from states aren’t forthcoming, especially from states like West Bengal and Rajasthan, which till now have accepted the smallest amount number of such trains despite being a big source of migrant population.
As on May 10, a complete of 366 Shramik Special trains are operationalised across the country, of which 287 had reached their destinations and 79 trains are in transit.
These 287 trains were terminated in various states like Andhra Pradesh (1 train), Bihar (87), Himachal Pradesh (1), Jharkhand (16), Madhya Pradesh (24), Maharashtra (3), Odisha (20), Rajasthan (4), Telangana (2), Uttar Pradesh (127), West Bengal (2).