New Delhi: As the operation of Shramik Specials move towards culmination, Railways' data showed that of the 4,040 trains run till Sunday, 256 were cancelled by state governments, with Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh being the top defaulters.
Maharashtra cancelled 105 trains since May 1 and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has been very vocal about the trains the state demanded but did not use.
Gujarat, from where the maximum number of trains originated, defaulted on 47 occasions, followed by Karnataka (38) and Uttar Pradesh (30), the data showed.
Officials indicated that most trains were cancelled due to a lack of coordination between the originating and the terminating state.
"We cannot run the trains without proper protocol. There were cases where the originating states did not provide us with the list of passengers ready to board the trains so it had to be cancelled. The cancellations were primarily due to the lack of coordination between the two states," an official said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs amended the protocol for Shramik trains in mid-May, removing the need for consent from terminating states for these services. This cut out the possibility of any state not accepting the trains.
Gujarat, which cancelled the maximum trains after Maharashtra, also ran the maximum 1,026 migrant special trains, ferrying more than 15 lakh migrant workers to their home states.
At least 77 per cent of the total 15.18 lakh migrant workers were sent to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and remaining to West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.
The Maharashtra government facilitated the movement of 802 trains, second only to Gujarat, with 423 trains bound for Uttar Pradesh and 193 for Bihar.
Other states that cancelled the Shramik trains included Delhi (7), Telangana (9), Andhra Pradesh (6), Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu (4 each), Rajasthan (2) and Goa, Haryana, Kerala and Uttarakhand (1 each).