Congress Will Pay Migrants’ Train Fare, Says Sonia Gandhi, Slams Centre

New Delhi: Sonia Gandhi today attacked the government over migrants stranded by the nationwide coronavirus lockdown being asked to pay for their train ride home and declared that the Congress would pay the train fare for them.

“This will be the Indian National Congress’ humble contribution in service of our compatriots and to stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with them,” the Congress president said in a letter this morning.

“Our workers and labourers are the ambassadors of our nation’s growth. When our Government can recognise its responsibility by arranging free air travel for our citizens stranded abroad, when the Government can spend nearly Rs. 100 crores on transport and food etc. for just one public programme in Gujarat, when the Rail Ministry has the largesse to donate Rs. 151 Crores to the PM’s Corona fund, then why can’t these essential members of our nation’s fabric be given a fraction of the same courtesy, especially free rail travel, at this hour of acute distress?”

Sonia Gandhi said the centre barely gave a four-hour notice of the lockdown, so workers and migrant labourers were denied the opportunity to return to their homes.

“Post the partition of 1947, this is the first time India witnessed a tragedy with such a massive human cost as thousands of migrant workers and labourers were forced to walk home several hundred kilometres on foot – without food, without medicines, without money, without transportation, without anything except for the desire to return to their families and loved ones,” she wrote.

Even today, she said, lakhs of workers and migrant labourers were “languishing in different parts of the country” and wished to return to their homes and families but didn’t have money or free transport.

“What is particularly disturbing is that the Central Government and the Rail Ministry are charging them for train tickets in this hour of crisis,” the Congress president noted.

She said the centre and the railways ministry had chosen to completely ignore the Congress’s repeated demands.

“The Indian National Congress has, therefore, taken a decision that every Pradesh Congress Committee shall bear the cost for the rail travel of every needy worker and migrant labourer and shall take necessary steps in this regard,” she said.