Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren has instructed the district administrations to make arrangements to quarantine several hundreds of Manipuris who will start arriving in Imphal in big numbers from May 12 onwards.
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A special train to bring 1,200 Manipuris from Bengaluru to Jiribam railway station in Manipur left on May 9. Official reports said that out of about 50,000 Manipuri students, workers and other government and private company employees, about 30,000 want to return to Manipur in the wake of the the COVID-19 outbreak. The State is in the green zone.
One woman from Manipur recently died in Mumbai reportedly due to COVID-19 infection. Officials fear that some undetected cases may still be there in Manipur since open symptoms are not visible.
Mr. Biren said that the government was making all efforts to bring stranded Manipuris to Imphal. ₹12 lakh had been sanctioned from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund for shifting 1,200 persons in a train from Bengaluru to Imphal. He also appealed to all sections to follow protocols and not believe false reports on social media.
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The government made arrangements to shift 92 stranded students and persons from Guwahati. Some Ministers and MLAs had also later engaged buses to shift some persons from their respective constituencies free of charge. However, for the four buses organised by government, each passenger had to pay ₹3,000 as fare.
Deputy Chief Minister Yumnam Joykumar said, “The stranded persons should come to Guwahati, from where they could be shifted to Imphal. It is not practicable to fetch them from far-off corners of the country”.
Meanwhile, the Congress Legislative Party has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to shift the migrant workers from Manipur to their respective States. CLP leader Okram Ibobi said that his party would foot the transportation expenses.
Police in most of the valley districts are continuing to round up people who violate the curfew restrictions. Executive magistrates are imposing fines on joy riders. Police maintain that there is no relaxation of the curfew and protocols.