South Central Railway (SCR) has made plans to run 10 or more migrant special trains from Wednesday night to early on Thursday morning from Telangana and at least three from Andhra Pradesh.
Passengers of these trains would be determined by the respective State governments and most of these trains will be starting from suburban stations of Hyderabad-Secunderabad and Vijayawada, top railway officials informed.
Earlier, the zone had run 13 trains or Shramik specials — 11 from TS and two from AP — carrying up to 13,533 migrant workers to northern states starting from Tuesday night till early hours of Wednesday. About 11,761 passengers from TS and 1,772 from AP travelled in these 24 coach trains escorted by the railway police.
These special trains were run amidst Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao expressing his disappointment with the railways for collecting migrant worker fare during a press conference. Highly placed railway sources, on condition of anonymity, revealed that ₹97 lakh was received from both the governments for running the trains.
The TS government has announced that it is footing the bill but we are not aware if the AP government is doing the same, they said. The first migrant train was from Ghatkesar that began its journey to Bhagalpur in Bihar and another from Rayanapadu near Vijayawada in AP started towards Wadsa in Maharastra at about 10 p.m. The other 11 trains began their respective journeys between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.
The second train from Ghatkesar started towards Tatanagar in Jharkhand, two other trains started from Bibinagar towards Gaya in Bihar and Habeebgunj in Madhya Pradesh. Three migrant specials moved towards Dharbanga and Bhagalpur in Bihar, and Gorakhpur in UP.
Two other trains started from Cherlapalli towards Sitamarhi in Bihar and Barabanki in UP. One migrant special train each started from Medchal towards Patni in UP and another from Bollarum to Jodhpur in Rajasthan. From AP, a migrant train was run from Kurnool towarrds Bharuni in Bihar.
Passengers were registered by the State governments and were thermal screened before being allowed entry into stations and trains. The governments (of the two states) provided them with food and drinking water, while we took take care of it during the journey along with security. Social distancing was maintained in the seating arrangements by removing the middle berths, explained senior railway officials.
Meanwhile, the second migrant special that took workers to Khagaria in Bihar is expected to return on Thursday morning but railway officials are clueless whether it is carrying any stranded person from TS.
