West Bengal not allowing trains with migrants to reach state, Amit Shah writes to Mamata Banerjee

In his letter, Amit Shah said not allowing trains to reach West Bengal is "injustice" to the migrant workers from the state.

New Delhi: In yet another escalation of the war of words between the Centre and the West Bengal government, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has written to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleging that her regime was not cooperating over migrant workers’ issue.

In his letter to Mamata, the Union Home Minister stated that the West Bengal government is not allowing trains carrying migrant workers to reach the state, which may further create hardship for the labourers.

In his letter, Shah said not allowing trains to reach West Bengal is "injustice" to the migrant workers from the state.

Referring to the 'Shramik Special' trains being run by the central government to facilitate the transportation of migrant workers from different parts of the country to various destinations, Shah said that the Centre has facilitated more than two lakh migrants workers to reach home.

The Home Minister said migrant workers from West Bengal are also eager to reach home and the central government is also facilitating the train services.

"But we are not getting expected support from the West Bengal. The state government of West Bengal is not allowing the trains reaching to West Bengal. This is injustice with West Bengal migrant labourers. This will create further hardship for them," Shah wrote in his letter to the Trinamool Congress chief.

It may be noted that the Centre and the Bengal government have clashed frequently amid the coronavirus outbreak in the country, with an IMCT (inter-ministerial central team), which visited the state to review its handling of the crisis, this week accusing Banerjee's administration of taking an "antagonistic view".

In its observations on Monday, the central team said the high mortality rate in the state was a "clear indication of low testing and weak surveillance, tracking".

The Centre has also accused the state of violating lockdown guidelines and failing to ensure critical measures like social distancing.

Last week, the Centre allowed states to run special trains to ferry migrant workers stranded in various parts of the country, providing they displayed no COVID-19 symptoms and underwent a mandatory quarantine period on arrival.

The first such "special" train to Bengal set off from Rajasthan's Ajmer this week - bound for Durgapur via Asansol - carrying 1,200 migrant workers.

Shortly after the first train was announced Banerjee tweeted that a second would bring back a similar number of people stranded in Kerala.