Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has said that the Maharashtra government is yet to submit any detail of Shramik Special trains which are scheduled to run from Maharashtra tomorrow. In a series of tweets, the minister said that the Railways is ready to run 125 trains from Maharashtra tomorrow, but the state govt is yet to submit required details despite his public appeal for the same on Twitter. Piyush Goyal revealed the same after the Uddhav Thackeray govt in Maharashtra had claimed that they are not getting sufficient trains to send back migrant workers to their native states.
The Railways have also confirmed that they had to cancel as many as 65 scheduled trains from Maharashtra due to lack of registered passengers.
At 7:14 PM today, Piyush Goyal tweeted that they are ready to run 125 trains tomorrow from the state, and requested the Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to furnish necessary details like from where the trains will run, the destination of the trains, list of the passengers as per trains and their medical certificate. He requested the required information to be submitted within the next one hour with the General Manager of the Central Railways, so that the trains can planned on time.
He said he hoped that like in the past, trains don’t have to run empty after reaching the stations. ‘I assure you that as many trains you need will be made available’, the railway minister tweeted to the CM.
After one hour, Piyush Goyal tweeted that he had learnt from TV Maharashtra govt has claimed that they have given a list of 200 trains to the Indian Railways. But the GM of the Central Railway has not received any list of even a single train to be run tomorrow despite follow up, he informed. Goyal requested Maharashtra govt to provide the list as soon as possible.
After more than one and a half hours at around 9 PM, the railway minister against tweeted to inform that Maharashtra government has not submitted the list of the 125 trains for tomorrow. He said that it takes time to plan trains and they don’t want empty trains standing on the stations, so it is impossible to plan without full details.
“I hope that the Government of Maharashtra will fully cooperate in the efforts made for the benefit of migrant labourers,” Piyush Goyal posted a further tweet hoping that the Maharashtra govt will cooperate by providing the required details.
After the tweets of Piyush Goyal, the Central Railway issued a statement regarding Shramik special trains run from Maharashtra. They informed that so far 520 such trains have been operated from the state on the request of nodal officers of the state. They also revealed that 65 trains scheduled to run from Maharashtra were cancelled as the state govt failed to submit necessary details. They further added that several Shramik special trains from Maharashtra ran with less number of passengers than capacity. The statement notes that there are not much demand for running Shramik trains from several districts in the state.
The Central Railway confirmed that demands of nodal officers of Maharashtra for trains have been met on a day to day basis, thereby refuting the claim of the state govt that they are not getting adequate trains. They informed that they have been directed to run 125 trains tomorrow, and they were waiting for two hours for the list of passengers with their destinations.
The Maharashtra govt yesterday had claimed that while they have demanding daily 70 trains to send migrants back to their states, they are getting only 45-50 trains per day. They had said that need around 200 more trains to send the migrants back to their states, as the government wants to send them back before the ongoing lockdown ends on May 31.
