Migrant workers: Punjab, Gujarat, Delhi take the lead, Bihar yet to act

New Delhi: At a time when the state government of Bihar is yet to start the registration process to bring back its lakhs of migrant workers stranded in different states, the governments of Punjab, Delhi, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, etc has already taken a lead in facilitating migrants workers stranded in all these states.

Finding no way to return back to their native places due to apathy of Bihar government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, migrant workers stranded in the states of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, etc are taking to social media platforms to slam their Bihar CM.

In contrary to Bihar CM, the Punjab government has taken the lead in registering the migrants residing within the state. The state, which is led by Chief Minister Capt Amrinder Singh, has designed a special online portal for this purpose and through the hard work of the officials engaged in managing the portal and reaching out to the migrants, more than 6.44 lakh migrants have been registered through the portal.

As per a senior government official, the detailed data is has been regularly shared with the destination states and once they finalise arrangements for the safe return of these migrants, the Punjab government will facilitate their movement keeping in view, the health protocols mandated by the government of India.

The similar reports have also come from Gujarat as with the proactive approach of the state government about 20 lakh migrant labourers have shown their interest in returning back to their respective homes such Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra, etc.

Following the MHA order, Gujarat government constituted a team comprising 16 IAS and IPS officers to manage the task and within a small period of time, more than 20 lakh workers from different parts of the state have registered themselves.

Working in this direction, the Delhi government led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has also released a standard operation procedure (SoP) for the safe return of migrant workers. As per the SoP, all-district magistrates have been tasked to supervise preparation of a comprehensive database of migrant workers stranded in the capital city due to implementation of nationwide lockdown necessitated to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, Bihar CM, who is facing the wrath of opposition leaders as well as millions of workers, released a portal to facilitate the return of people stranded in Bihar to other states, but yet to announce any user-friendly web portal to bring back their workers stranded in Maharashtra, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, etc.

According to a group of workers stranded in Maharashtra, the weblink provided by local administration is not accepting their details due to which they are not able to register themselves.

"The portal is in Marathi and English due to which most of us are not able to access it. Besides, the portal has no details about districts of Bihar," said a migrant worker who, along with 15 others, is stranded in Maharashtra's Palghar district.