Mumbai: Migrant labourers, in their thousands, have rushed to fill application forms and get the tickets back to their natives, a day after the first train with migrant labourers departed from Maharashtra. The state government has authorized police stations to accept the forms. Ninety-four police stations in Mumbai received 15,000 applications yesterday. The state disaster control room got 7,000 more from across the state through e-mail while Nagpur district received as many as 13,000 since Friday. Many however were unhappy with the cumbersome application process and were irked when they learnt that they would have to pay for the travel to home despite hardly earning anything since the lockdown.
The first train left from Nasik to Lucknow yesterday with 847 migrants and early today two more trains left for Gorakhpur, one from Bhiwandi and the other from Vasai carrying 1,200 passengers each. As word spread about the train leaving Bhiwandi station, a crowd of around 5,000 gathered at the station yesterday evening. Police and railway officials had a tough time trying to convince them to leave.
Officials meanwhile told media that the state began receiving Marathi migrants from other states. Elaborating further the official stated that states which share a border with Maharashtra had been asked to coordinate the movements on a priority basis. Many want to move from rural Maharashtra to neighbouring states such as Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Daman and Diu, etc. and state officials are getting this arranged
