7 states demand 63 Shramik Special trains from railways

New Delhi, Jun 12: Seven state governments have listed their demand for a total of 63 Shramik Special trains from the railways, days after the Railway Board chairman wrote to the chief secretaries to give their "residual demand" for such trains to ferry migrant workers back home.

Of the total, a maximum of 32 trains will depart from Kerala while the destinations of most trains will be West Bengal (23), followed by Bihar (10), Assam (5), the railways said.

Apart from Kerala, Tamil Nadu demanded 10 Shramik Special trains, followed by Jammu and Kashmir (9), Karnataka (6), Andhra Pradesh (3), West Bengal (2) and Gujarat (1). The Railways said out of the 32 trains that will originate from Kerala, 19 will head to West Bengal.

The Uttar Pradesh government is yet to give its requirement of trains, the railways said.

The Railway Board chairman had written letters to the states on May 29, June 3 and June 9 on the subject and emphasised that "the railways will provide the desired number of Shramik Special trains within 24 hours of the request".

The last letter on June 9 was addressed to the states hours after the Supreme Court directed the Centre to complete the process of transporting migrant workers back to their native places in the next 15 days.

The railways has run more than 4,347 Shramik Special trains since May 1 to transport approximately 60 lakh people to their destination states. Apart from the Shramik Special trains, the railways has also started running the 15 pairs of air conditioned Rajdhani special trains from May 12 and 100 pairs of special passenger trains from June 1.