Surat: Fleeced migrants feeling ‘cheated’

Melvyn Thomas | TNN | Updated: May 4, 2020, 08:04 IST

Migrants queue up outside shops to buy application forms on Sunday

SURAT: The plight of migrants, who have been forced to return to Surat from Gujarat borders, left several greedy people unmoved.
Taking advantage of the workers’ desperation to return to their native places, some grocery and medical shops are selling application forms for Rs 10 to these migrant workers.
This, even as the district administration, has added to the woes of migrants by making online permits and their printouts mandatory to leave the state.
Migrants were seeing queuing up outside shops in Godadara, Kadodara, Pandesara and Limbayat to purchase application form for vehicle pass to travel to their native places.
The forms printed on plain paper without validation from the district collector’s office are being sold for Rs10 each, sources said.
A video shot by Jitendra Yadav, an alert citizen from Kadodara, has gone viral on social media. The owner of a medical store in Kadodara can be seen distributing the application forms to migrants by taking out photocopies for Rs10 each.
As the video went viral, police booked the medical store owner for cheating. PA Valvi, inspector, Kadodara police station, told TOI, “We have taken the cognizance of the incident and booked the medical store owner in Kadodara. Based on the video shot by Jitendra Yadav, we have registered a complaint and investigation is on”
Thousands of migrants returned to Surat after travelling nearly 1,300 km twoway journeys from places as far as Dahod on Gujarat- MP border and Modasa in north Gujarat after being refused permission cross the borders.
About 80 private buses and more than 50 private vehicles ferrying more than 6,000 migrant workers towards Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra returned to the city.