Congress claims migrants detained after meet with Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday (May 16) claimed that some migrant labourers were taken into preventive custody soon after they interacted with party lead Rahul Gandhi in Delhi today. The party claimed that the police told them that they had directions to do so. 

Gandhi interacted with migrant labourers near the Sukhdev Vihar flyover in the national capital today and asked them about their problems as they walked home amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown. Gandhi sat on the pavement and gave the migrant workers a patient hearing and assured them of help in reaching their homes, Congress leaders claimed.

Dressed in black pants and white kurta, he talked to the workers and heard their grievances.

Sources close to Gandhi said he had an impromptu hour-long meeting with a group of 20 migrants, including women and children, walking from their worksite near Ambala to their village near Jhansi. The meeting took place as they sat on the footpath on Mathura road in the national capital.

Mahesh Kumar, a migrant worker from Madhya Pradesh who along with 14 of his family members was sitting at the footpath, was one of the labourers who interacted with the Congress leader. He later told reporters, "It was nice talking to him. At least someone heard us and our problems."

Sources close to Rahul Gandhi said while adhering strictly to the law, at the request of Gandhi, volunteers from the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee have stepped up to help the group get back to their village.

Party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra later tweeted thanking Rahul Gandhi and saying that someone has to talk to these migrant labourers and hear their ordeal.

"These are our own people. We will have to sit and talk with them. Their suffering has to be shared. They are nation builders. We cannot leave them alone in this time of crisis. Thank you, my leader, Rahul Gandhi," she said in a tweet in Hindi.

A Delhi Congress leader said that Gandhi was passing from Sukhdev Vihar when he spotted the migrant workers stopped by the police. He intervened and talked to the migrant workers and assured them help.