Politics over pain: Migrants' long walk home and the Centre-state tussles

The Centre and state governments bonded and then fell apart during the longest lockdown walk

Tired of walking miles after the lockdown was announced on March 24, hundreds of migrants had gathered at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border on Friday in the hope of getting back home by bus once the word had spread that the administration was arranging transport for them. Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) were still undecided on whether to give a green signal to a proposal to screen and transport workers to their domicile states while visuals of the migrants’ long walk made international news.

The governments in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand had started making arrangements to transport migrants from their states. In fact, Ila Giri, the assistant resident commissioner of the Uttarakhand government, moved fast to issue a notice even before the lockdown kicked in. The notice said the state government would make arrangements to pick up stranded workers from two bus stations in Delhi.

It’s another matter that the Uttarakhand government could not ply the buses as planned-- the Centre’s lockdown order had put a ban on the movement of people within or outside the states, except if they were travelling for essential services or were under the exempt list. Frustrated migrants however were already on the road to Uttar Pradesh, hoping to cross the border on foot, leaving the remaining home-bound journey to luck.

“By Friday, around midnight, (UP) Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath decided to send buses to pick the migrants from the state. The bus drivers and conductors of the state government buses were called in and it was decided to start the service,” UP CM's advisor Mrityunjay Kumar told Business Standard recalling the events of the past few days. He added that by then, the state had made arrangements to bring in 150,000 migrants by putting them under quarantine facilities in governments schools or colleges in villages. In the past three to four days, around 300,000 had reached UP, Kumar said.

By Saturday noon, when Adityanath’s office said on Twitter that 1,000 buses had been arranged “to help migrant workers reach their destination without any hassle’’, buses had started arriving in various parts of UP, the word spread like wildfire in Delhi.

Within half an hour of the UP government’s official announcement, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said that about 100 buses of the Delhi government were carrying people who were trying to leave Delhi. At the same time, Sisodia appealed to the migrants to follow the lockdown. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal too made an appeal, requesting migrants to not return to their villages as the state had made arrangements for food, shelter and whatever else they needed. The Central government, which had imposed a lockdown, remained silent.

On the roads of the national capital, a sense of understanding was visible between the authorities as the Delhi Police helped migrants board the buses. The Delhi Police, which comes under the Union Home Affairs Ministry, even prevented workers from walking on the highway while making them reach the Anand Vihar bus station, where the UP government buses were lined up.

“The Delhi government had been making appeals to the migrants not to move out. We didn’t want to promote any kind of movement. We observed that people had started making a move from the state on March 26 and according to our estimates 60 per cent were from Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan who were passing through Delhi,” Delhi’s Dialogue and Development Commission vice-chairman Jasmine Shah said.

He added that though these were manageable numbers, “the chaos” started with the UP government’s announcement on Saturday. “No governments had made special arrangements till then. We had made all arrangement for workers living in Delhi.”

But Kumar said the Delhi government had started moving buses from various industrial areas of the national capital towards the UP border on Friday, which led to huge crowds. The UP government was left with no option but to bring the migrants back, he added.

“The Delhi government buses were deployed only to disperse huge crowds within the city as it was counter-intuitive in tackling coronavirus. So, we did send buses to some locations in UP,” Shah said.

By Saturday afternoon, around 50,000 people had gathered at the UP border to catch buses to their home destinations. This was a direct result of the UP government’s decision, taking the central government into confidence, to ply the 1000 buses, Shah pointed out.

The Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation had sent a communiqué to all the district magistrates within the state to allow the entry of buses which have been deployed to pick people stuck across various points at border districts of Delhi. “The government has now taken a decision to allow these passengers en route to reach their destination…The special task of carrying people from Delhi border to various districts in UP will continue today and on March 29,” UPSRTC managing director Raj Shekhar had said in a letter.

The UP government fell short of buses as the crowd swelled at the border and it had to dial up the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Haryana government for help. Some buses came from Faridabad and picked up people even on Sunday to take them to UP. By then, migrant workers from other states had also started moving in the hope of returning home. Soon, the exodus and the crowd breaching all lockdown norms sent out panic waves in the power corridor and the Central government intervened on Sunday.

Union Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba and Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla held a video conference on Sunday morning with the top bureaucrats and police officers of Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi. “In the meeting, they expressed their alarm and unhappiness at the large-scale movement of migrant labour on the roads by foot followed by the accumulation of a large number of people especially at the Anand Vihar Bus Terminal. In order to disperse the crowds from this area, buses had to be provided in large numbers on March 27 and 28 evening,” a communication sent by Haryana Director General of Police Manoj Yadav to officers within the state on Sunday stated.

The central government decided to immediately seal the borders and stop movement of people. It also ordered the state governments to offer relief measures for the migrants, instructing them to pick up workers travelling on foot on highways. The Centre was clear that the migrants must be returned to the localities from where they had started.

By Sunday night, the Central government had suspended two senior Delhi government officials – one in the transport department and another in finance, while issuing a showcause notice to a state official in the home and buildings departments and the sub-divisional magistrate of Seelampur (in-charge of Anand Vihar bus terminal area), indirectly putting all the blame on the Delhi government.