Gujarat: Migrant unrest breaks out in industrial belt of Hazira

SURAT: The migrants unrest spread to the industrial belt of Hazira on Saturday after large number of labourers came out on the road and resorted to stone pelting at the police teams.
Police lobbed six teargas shells and resorted to lathicharge to disperse the migrants, who were demanding transport arrangement for going to their native states.
For the past couple of days, migrants were gathering in groups in Mora to press for their demand. But the situation turned violent following an announcement made on loudspeaker by a local officer on Friday. "During representation by the workers, a junior government officer in Mora announced that trains for migrants are being cancelled due to multiple reasons. Following this announcement, the workers feared that they won’t be able to return," a top police officer told TOI.
The crowd started gathering at Mora village crossroad since 7am. Initially, the crowd was small and they returned to their homes after being convinced by police. However, at around 9am, the crowd started swelling. They first went to make a representation at Mora police chowky and from there they reached the house of village sarpanch.
As the number of migrants increased on the road, local police called for more deployment. Acrimony soon broke out with migrants shouting in chorus with demand to go back to their native states. Some of them started pelting stones at the cops when police tried to disperse the crowd. Meanwhile, police teams reached the spot from Surat city and brought the situation under control.
Police arrested 15 migrant workers and detained over 100 for rioting.
"We identified the arrested and detained persons from CCTV footages," said A K Verma, assistant commissioner of police.
Mora sarpanch, Bharat Patel, said, “We have helped workers fill up application forms to return to their native places and submitted them to the district collector office. Due to some technical issue, these workers were not issued tickets. Fed up daily representation over the last few days, they turned violent today.”
Over 9,500 workers from Hazira have applied for train tickets in groups.
Sources in police informed that the workers are connected through various WhatsApp groups. They shared the messages to come out to protest due to which large number of them gathered on road within minutes on Saturday.
Some of the top Indian corporate houses like Reliance, Essar, NTPC, Shell, Kribhco, ONGC, L&T, Adani Port have their facilities in Hazira and nearly 30,000 migrants working in these industries live in Mora. Majority of the labourers on contractual basis.