Railways to run special trains for stranded migrant workers, students

Mukesh Ranjan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 1

The government on Friday decided to allow the Indian Railways to run special trains for the movement of stranded migrant labourers, students, pilgrims and other stuck at various places in different parts of the country due to nationwide lockdown.

A day after government decided to allow states to move stranded people to send them to their native places, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held high-level consultations with Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Railways Minister Piyush Goyal to decide on running special trains and work out a broad plan for their operations, sources in the government said. “It was decided to run special trains for the stranded people and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) was directed to issue guidelines for the same,” a senior government official said.

Following this, the MHA in an order said, “Movement of migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other persons, stranded at different places, is also allowed by special trains to be operated by Ministry of railways (MoR).”

In the order, the MHA has asked the MoR to designate “nodal officer(s)” for coordinating with states/Union Territories (UTs) for their movement. It said, “MoR will issue detailed guidelines for sale of tickets; and for social distancing and other safety measures to be observed at train stations, train platforms and within the trains.”

The MHA further noted that the rest of conditions stipulated for movement of persons in its order issued on Thursday will continue to apply to such movements by trains.

It is to be noted here that even many state governments, including Bihar, Punjab and Telangana, had also asked the Centre to operate special trains as “Bus journey” as allowed through an MHA order on Thursday would be time consuming and could be suitable only in shorter distance cases only.

Officials in the MoR indicated that the Indian Railways is ready with its plan “to operate point-to-point trains” between states with their consent.

One-off special train with only general sleeper coaches from Lingampalli (Hyderabad) to Hatia in Jharkhand was chugged off at 4.50 am on Friday on request of the Telangana Government as per the directions of the Ministry of Railways. All necessary precautions such as prior screening of passengers, maintaining social distancing at station and in the train have been followed.