Train tickets of stranded migrants will be paid by congress says Sonia Gandhi

Amid coronavirus virus where traveling restrictions were eased by Centre are charged with tickets for train and bus trips. Sonia Gandhi on this declared the Congress would bear the travel expenses of the home-bound migrant workers.

Her announcement was answer to the outrageous movement of government as it was more of extracting money from the lockdown-hit poor, forced the Centre to backtrack on the train fares.

Rarely in recent years has the Congress been able to set the agenda in such a manner against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s domineering politics.

The free rides have since been extended by two more days. Gujarat too had announced the migrants would have to pay bus fares.

Karnataka’s BJP government too had made the bus journeys free for three days after the Congress offered a cheque for Rs 1 crore to pay for the migrants’ return home.

In an emotional video message and a written statement, Sonia Gandhi appealed that the government had betrayed the most vulnerable sections of society during this crisis.

She called workers as Nation-Builders, it pained every citizen to workers walking miles together barefoot in hot summer with no food and water. Leave apart money and other facilities, even food was not provided to them. It touched all of us.”

“It appeared to us that it is a cry of a family member; a mother, a husband, a son yearning to reach their families, their children. We thought these nation-builders have the first right on the donations of thousands of crores that the government received. This should have been used to take these stranded workers back home. But this did not happen,” she said. She added that the Congress would now ensure they reached home safely.

Congress States like Maharashtra, Punjab and Chhattisgarh announced they would bear the travel costs of their returning migrants. Many state Congress chiefs released video messages endorsing the party’s decision and expressing their resolve to foot the bill.

The party mounted a social media campaign to cash in on what it described as a “historic decision” by an Opposition party.

Rahul Gandhi tweeted: “On one hand Railway is extracting fare from the workers stranded in different states; on the other, the Ministry of Railways is donating Rs 151 crore to PM-Cares Fund. Please unravel this mystery.”

By afternoon, the government was under immense pressure. Vague “clarifications” and denials began pouring in.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra and party social media head Amit Malviya claimed the migrants were never meant to pay the fare and tried to shift the blame on Congress-ruled states.

They claimed the railways were bearing 85 per cent of the costs and the states 15 per cent, and that the Congress governments should pay their share like the BJP-ruled states.

Sonia’s letter said: “The central government barely gave a four-hour notice of the lockdown. 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.

“The very thought of their plight is enough to break our hearts as there was also the outpouring of support from fellow Indians for their inspiring resolve.”

She added: “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 crore on transport and food, etc, for just one public programme in Gujarat (a reference to US President Donald Trump’s tour), when the rail ministry has the largesse to donate Rs 151 crore 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?”

Now the question is why the PM funds transactions are not made public. What it is secretive of it. Crores of amount is been mounted in the funds but still the migrants are charged who are already going through lot.