State govt’s demand for special trains to send migrants back valid: Maha minister

Mumbai, Apr 17: Maharashtra Minister of State for Home Shambhuraje Desai said the state government's demand' of special trains for taking migrants back to their home states was valid.

Speaking to a Marathi news channel, Desai said that Shiv Sena leader and state tourism minister Aaditya Thackeray had been saying that migrant labours stranded in Maharashtra should have been allowed to return to their home states.

The demand for running special trains was valid and based on ground reality, Desai said.

"There is nothing wrong with such demand as it would take some burden off the state and it will also reduce the stress under which these people (migrants who are stranded) are," the minister said.

Congress leader Mohammed Arif Naseem Khan had claimed on Wednesday that the Maharashtra government was ready to send migrant workers back to their native states in view of the lockdown, but Chief Ministers of those states were not ready to accept them.

Khan's statement came in the backdrop of a protest by migrant workers in Bandra on Tuesday, demanding that they be sent back to their native places in view of the coronavirus- enforced lockdown which has rendered them jobless. Most of them were from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.