The High Court had on Thursday said only those migrants who test negative for COVID-19 should be allowed into the state.
The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Orissa High Court order which directed that migrants who want to return to the state must test negative for COVID-19. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Advocate Kanu Agrawal told the apex court that the Ministry of Home Affairs had allowed migrants who have no symptoms to return as long as they are quarantined in their native state.
On Thursday, the High Court had said only those migrants who test negative for COVID-19 should be allowed into the state, forcing the state government to immediately cancel permission given to other states, including Gujarat, to transport stranded workers by train.
A bench of Justices S Panda and K R Mohapatra, while hearing a petition on the return of migrants, said, “State government should ensure that all the migrants who are in queue to come to Odisha should be tested negative of COVID-19 before boarding the conveyance”.
According to Odisha’s Information and Public Relations Department, the district of Ganjam saw a spike in coronavirus cases after 17 people who had returned from Surat tested positive. The number of Odisha’s coronavirus patients touched 219 on Thursday evening.
Nearly three lakh workers, mostly from Odisha’s Ganjam district, work in diamond cutting and textile units in Gujarat’s Surat. They started returning to Odisha after the Centre permitted the movement of migrant labourers despite the extension of the nationwide lockdown for two weeks. The first train from Surat to Odisha was flagged off on May 2, and 16 trains have left so far that ferried 19,200 people.
According to the Odisha government, 4,225 migrants from different states arrived in Odisha on Thursday, making it 49,765 since May 3. The state expects at least 5 lakh people to return.