105 special trains to bring 1.3 lakh stranded back to West Bengal

KOLKATA/SILGURI: The Bengal government has arranged for 105 special trains to bring back stranded people from around the country over the next one month, chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced on Thursday, adding that 32 of these trains will reach the state in the next seven days, carrying nearly 38,000 migrant workers, tourists and students.
Railway officials estimate that these trains will ferry around 1.3 lakh people stuck in about 25 cities spread across 12 states. Over the next week, the highest number of trains will arrive from Maharashtra, followed by New Delhi and Kerala.

“Towards our commitment helping people stuck in different parts of the country and who want to return back to Bengal, I am pleased to announce that we have arranged 105 additional special trains. Over the coming days, these special trains will embark from different states for various destinations across Bengal bringing our people back home”, Banerjee tweeted.
The first of these trains will start from Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad on Saturday and reach Howrah on Sunday morning. On Monday, trains will arrive from New Delhi, Haridwar, Mumbai, Chennai and Gautam Buddh Nagar.
Overall, most trains will arrive from Kerala: as many as 28, from 11 different locations, according to a state government notification. “More than 1.5 lakh migrant workers from Bengal are stuck in Kerala, so we needed to make special arrangements for them,” said a state government official. “We are also looking at other ways to bring all the people from our state back.”
From Maharashtra — among the worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic — there will be 18 trains from six different locations: Mumbai, Thane, Nagpur, Raigad, Amravati and Pune. Ten trains will originate from various locations in Tamil Nadu; seven from Uttar Pradesh; six each from Delhi, Rajasthan and Haryana; five each from Gujarat, Telangana and Karnataka; three from Andhra Pradesh; two from Jammu and Kashmir; and one each from Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.
The trains will take passengers to seven different locations. New Coochbehar will get passengers from 42 trains, the highest of the lot. Apart from that, 24 each will go to Howrah and Maldah Town; six to Burdwan; five to Kharagpur; three to Krishnanagar and one to Durgapur. “We have been successful in bringing back nearly one lakh people, but approximately 4 lakh people are still stranded outside the state,” the official said. “We conducted a survey, according to which we arranged for the trains. We wanted the trains to reach stations nearest to the passengers’ homes, so that they could directly go home. Once they disembark at the stations, we fill follow medical protocol and send them home in buses,” he added.
On Thursday, at least 152 Sikkim residents, mostly students stranded in various parts of the country, arrived at New Jalpaiguri station on a Shramik Special train. Nearly 1,200 more passengers arrived on a Bengaluru-NJP special train in the evening. The Sikkim residents were taken back to on nine buses.People hegoing to east Sikkim and north Sikkim will be dropped at Rangpo while the residents of south and west Sikkim will be dropped at Malli. After which they will have to go through certain medical protocols and further they will be sent to different quarantine centres for 14 days after which they will be sent home,” said Deputy General Manager, Sikkim Nationalised Transport, Bhupendra Chettri.