PM blamed Opposition states: Safety net torn, as migrants hit the road, state govts flagged challenge to Centre

An examination of the sequence of events and efforts made by the Centre and the state governments during the first wave shows that little thought had gone into what a national lockdown could precipitate for migrant workers. In fact, on the ground, it wasn’t as black and white as the PM’s remarks make it out to be as states, taken aback by the humanitarian challenge, scrambled to intervene.

At first, states appealed to migrants to stay but the lockdown that rendered many jobless coupled with the lack of a safety net and fear of the unknown — the national case count on Day One of the lockdown was just 525 — forced countless to hit the road home.

Indeed, on March 28, 2020, four days into the lockdown, amid chaos on the streets as thousands set out on foot for their homes in UP and Bihar, Kejriwal appealed to migrant workers not to leave the city.

That same night, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in a Twitter post, said: “The UP government has arranged 1000 buses for labourers fleeing due to the lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus.”

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray made a similar appeal, switching from Marathi to Hindi in a public address on April 19, promising to send migrant workers home once the pandemic was over.

Statements issued by the Centre, including those by the Prime Minister’s Office, in the month after the lockdown, show that it was only on April 24 that the Prime Minister first referred in public to migrant workers.

During an online interaction on Panchayati Raj Diwas, he asked a sarpanch from Bihar about “migrant friends from your panchayat” who “might have returned home from other cities and those who could not return yet would also want to come”.

Earlier, in a Mann Ki Baat address on March 29, the PM had apologised to the nation for putting the “poor in difficulty”.

Statements available on the website of the Press Information Bureau show that the issue of “migrant workers” was flagged by states as early as April 2, 10 days after the lockdown, when the Prime Minister held an interaction with CMs on Covid-19.

The issue of “difficulties faced by migrant labour” was again flagged on April 6 — this time Union ministers briefed the PM on the issue.

That the Union Home Ministry was aware of what was unfolding on the streets was evident on March 27 — a day before Kejriwal and Adityanath reached out to migrant workers — when Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a virtual meeting with CMs and asked them to provide help to migrant workers.

That same day, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued an advisory to all states to ensure accommodation and food for out-of-work migrant labour so that they do not move across states.

But this did not stop the exodus.

On March 28, the MHA modified its 2015 notification on relief measures in times of disasters and added “homeless people, including migrant labourers, stranded due to lockdown measures” allowing states to use SDRF funds to help migrants.

Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla wrote to Chief Secretaries, asking them “to set up Relief Camps along the Highways for people moving on highways, including setting up of tented accommodation to ensure that these persons will stay in the relief camps till the lockdown orders are in place.”

Confusion marked the efforts of the Centre and the states to deal with the crisis with several states arranging for transport to take migrants home while others asked them to stay put. States such as Delhi and UP brought out buses on roads to assist hapless migrants. By evening, thousands had thronged the Anand Vihar bus terminus on the Delhi-UP border.

On March 29, the Centre asked states to seal inter-state and inter-district borders to stop the exodus and issued orders to quarantine migrant workers on the move in the nearest shelter for 14 days.

On March 31, the Supreme Court intervened and directed that adequate medical facilities besides proper arrangements for food, clean drinking water and sanitation be ensured for migrant workers at relief camps/shelters across the country even as it observed that the anxiety and fear of the migrants should be understood by the police and other authorities, and that they should deal with the migrants in a “humane manner”.

The government had submitted in the Supreme Court then that the mass migration was a result of “panic created by fake news”.

On the backfoot, the Centre maintained silence even on April 24 when UP began extracting migrant workers belonging to the state from other states in buses in violation of MHA guidelines. Five days later, the MHA allowed inter-state movement of migrant workers.

On May 1, the Centre started Shramik Special Trains to carry migrants to their homes. But it could never meet the demand.