Assam in a difficult position, says Himanta Biswa Sarma over Centre's desicion to run New Delhi-Dibrugarh daily train without interval

GUWAHATI: Assam finds itself in a difficult position with centre’s two decisions, to run the special New Delhi-Dibrugarh train daily for one week, which will bring in nearly 7000 people, despite its request for intervals between two trains and to stop Covid-19 tests for all the in-bound people on arrival.
“Until yesterday we thought that there will be just one train from New Delhi to Dibrugarh. But, yesterday we were informed by railway board that this train will run for one whole week daily and this is the biggest challenge before us,” health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
“We wanted interval between running of two trains but Centre has made it clear that host states are putting pressure to get the home states take back their people as medical facilities have reached the full capacity in the host states,” Sarma wanted. He added, “In fact there was no unanimity between states on the running of trains. Bihar wants railways to run as many trains possible to the state but with prior consultation.”
In addition to the shramik specials, railways are also running 15 trains from New Delhi to 15 important cities from Tuesday and the first train to Dibrugarh will arrive in Guwahati on Wednesday and Dibrugarh the next morning.
“We have the manifest and this first train is carrying 889 passengers and majority of them, 842, will get down at Dibrugarh and they also include people of Arunachal Pradesh. Eight passengers will get down at Kokrajhar, 37 in Guwahati and two in Mariani,” Sarma said.
He added that this train will travel through several Covid-19 affected states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal and there will be people bound for northeast who will be embarking this train at designated stoppages in these states.
Sarma said, “Centre has also made it clear that testing all people on arrival, symptomatic or asymptomatic as the state had decided earlier, would be in impossible task. Only the symptomatic people will be tested. Since we cannot test the asymptomatic people, they will be sent to strict 14 days institutional quarantine.”
The state has set up a three-tier quarantine facility—hospitals, district headquarters and assembly constituencies.
“We have converted schools, colleges, anganwadi centres etc as institutional centres at the district headquarters for the asymptomatic people of that district will have to stay. The facility will be simple, but that will be reality of life for 14 days. After the district headquarters facilities are exhausted, we will send the asymptomatic people to quarantine institutional facilities in assembly constituencies and chief minister is personally writing to all MLAs for their cooperation,” Sarma said.
When asked if not testing all in-coming people would raise the risk level, Sarma said, “We thought so when trains were not running, but the situation is different now. We have stepped into a decisive level.”