Maharashtra: MSRTC buses likely to ferry students from Kota

Joy Sengupta | TNN | Updated: Apr 27, 2020, 07:13 IST

Chairs and bamboo sticks used as barricades around a closed dhaba on Katraj-Dehu Road bypass on Sunday

PUNE: A final decision on how to bring back the students stuck in Kota in Rajasthan will be taken on Monday, state transport minister Anil Parab told TOI. The minister said that in all likelihood, the buses of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) will be used for their transportation.
“We have decided to bring back the students of Maharashtra who are presently stuck in Kota. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a video-conferencing with the chief ministers on Monday, following which a final decision would be taken. If the Centre allows transportation through trains, the students would be home much sooner. However, if not, we will make up a preliminary plan on ways to bring them back,” the minister told TOI.
Sources told TOI that at present, there were more than 1,500 students belonging to different districts of Maharashtra stuck in Kota. “We don’t know the definite number of students who are stuck in Kota. It will be difficult to say as to how many buses, if at all, will be required to bring them home. However, the collectors of the different districts are being contacted and they are being told to provide us with numbers. If, for instance, there are 10 students of Sangli who are stuck, a bus will be sent for them and proper care will be taken to ensure social distancing and all other safety norms. The same goes for the students of another district of Maharashtra,” the minister said.
Sources in the transport department said the state government was in touch with the Rajasthan government and the authorities in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh as the buses will have to cross parts of both the states to reach Kota and come back with the students. “Going by the estimated number of students, one will need close to 100 busses. The whole operation, if finalized, will be done in phases,” a source said.
Maharashtra’s relief and rehabilitation minister Vijay Wedettiwar has said that the work towards bringing back the students will begin soon all the students would be brought back home within a week. The minister took to his Twitter handle on Sunday to inform that the students will be brought back from Monday onwards. Wedettiwar said the transport minister was requested to make arrangements to bring the students back.
Maharashtra’s chief secretary Ajoy Mehta on Saturday had asked his counterparts in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat to take back 3.5 lakh migrants belonging to these states who are presently stuck in Maharashtra. The state government said that they were willing to ferry the migrants to the borders of their states and hand them over.