Maha Cong foots travel bills of 4,627 migrants

Mumbai, May 7 (IANS) The Maharashtra unit of the Congress party has paid for the tickets of 4,627 migrants who travelled from Maharashtra to Bihar in the past couple of days, said state party chief and Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat here on Thursday.

Under the supervision of Energy Minister Nitin Raut, Animal Husbandry Minister Sunil Kedar and legislator Ranjit Kamble, the party paid for tickets of 2,019 migrants who took trains from Nagpur to Muzaffarpur and Wardha to Patna.

Chandrapur Guardian Minister Vijay Wadettiwar and MP Balubhau Dhanorkar, besides the Chandrapur city and district party units footed the travel costs for 239 migrants who went home to Patna, said Thorat.

On Thursday afternoon, state Congress Working President Muzaffar Hussain will arrange to send a batch of around 1,200 migrants by a special train to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The other migrants’ ticket and other bills have been taken care of by other district party units, legislators, MPs and other leaders in their respective areas.

The party also ensured the pre-embarkation health checkups of each migrant, helped them fill up forms, provided them with a kit of food, water, sanitizers, masks etc for the journey, said another office-bearer Shreenivas Bikkad.

In order to ease the woes of the migrants, the state Congress has set up a helpline in each district to answer their queries, he added.

The move came after an announcement by Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday, directing all the state party units to bear the ticket costs of and ensure the return of stranded migrants to their home states.

–IANS

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