Yesterday, the Maharashtra government had given statements that the centre is not providing enough trains to Maharashtra to ferry migrants. The Uddhav Thackeray government had claimed that they had given a list of 200 trains to the railways but the trains have not been made available yet.
Railway Minister Piyush Goyal took to Twitter to call out the Maharashtra government’s claim of trains not being available. Goyal tweeted, “The railways have been ready to give 125 trains, but the Maharashtra government has to provide the details of start and destination stations, list of migrant labourers as per their destination cities, medical certificates and other details. He also added that due to the failure of the Maharashtra government in providing the details of passengers and destinations, the railways have had to arrange and then cancel trains.
He had asked CM Uddhav Thackeray to make all the details available to the GM, Central Railways within an hour so trains can be finalised.
Later, the Railways minister again tweeted that despite waiting for 1.5 hours, the MH government has not sent any details to the GM. He added that train journeys have to be planned and the ministry does not want that after all the preparations and planning, the trains only idle on respective stations and are eventually cancelled as it had happened before.
More than 2.5 hours have passed but still passenger details for 125 planned trains in Maharashtra not received by GM Central Railway from Government of Maharashtra. pic.twitter.com/A4CXFpxKCZ
— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) May 24, 2020
65 trains had to be cancelled, says Railways
In a statement from the Railways shared by Goyal, it was stated that 65 trains had to be cancelled because the MH government had not made adequate preparations. It added that while certain states like Kerala, WB, Odisha have made specific requests to the railways over requirement of details or cancellations due to the Cyclone Amphan, there have been no such requests from the MH government over running special trains for districts like Amaravati, Dhule, Nashik, Chadrapaur and Akola.
The statement also added that the nodal officers fro the Railways have been constantly in touch with the nodal officers of the MH government and so far all their demands have been complied on a day to day basis. However, despite waiting for over 2.5 hours about the details needed from the state government about the trains, the MH government has not received any list of passengers and their destinations, it added.
The Railways stated that so far it has run 520 Shramik Special trains from Maharashtra, ferrying over 7.3 lakh migrant workers between May 1 and May 23.
