Priyanka Gandhi vs UP govt: How row over buses for migrants unfolded

NEW DELHI: The return of migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh to their home states during the lockdown has turned into a slugfest between the UP government and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, with both accusing each other of "playing politics" over the issue.
The latest row began when Priyanka Gandhi last week accused the UP government of being "insensitive" towards the migrant workers who wanted to return to their homes due to the coronavirus lockdown.
The Congress leader on Sunday urged Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath to allow the party ferry migrant labourers back home in buses arranged by it and kept ready at the state border. She made the appeal in a video message posted on Twitter, a day after 24 migrant workers were killed and 36 injured when a trailer rammed into a stationary truck, both carrying passengers, on a highway near Auraiya in Uttar Pradesh.
She also put out a video of the buses standing at Uttar Pradesh border ready for plying.

The UP government accepted the offer to run 1,000 buses to bring migrant labourers back to the state. The state government asked Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who had made the offer, to provide it with a list of buses along with the names of their drivers and conductors.
On Twitter a little later, Priyanka Gandhi, who is the Congress general secretary in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, thanked Adityanath.
"Thank you for allowing us to run 1,000 buses at the expense of the Congress to help thousands of brothers and sisters walking on the roads in Uttar Pradesh,” she tweeted in Hindi.
However, in a television interview last week, Adityanath accused the Congress of playing politics over the plight of migrant workers. He also blamed the Congress for the recent collision between two trucks which killed 27 migrant labourers on the Congress governments in Punjab and Rajasthan.
The war of words continues between the two parties after Priyanka Gandhi's office on Tuesday said the UP government has demanded that the 1,000 buses the party wants to ply for ferrying migrant labourers back to the state be handed over in Lucknow and alleged that the move is politically motivated.
In a letter to additional chief secretary Avneesh Kumar Awasthi, Priyanka Gandhi's private secretary Sandeep Singh said, "In a situation when thousands of workers are walking on the streets and thousands of people have gathered at the UP borders at various registration centres, sending 1,000 empty buses to Lucknow is not only a waste of time and resources but is also inhuman and the product of an anti-poor mindset."
Subsequently, Singh had given details of the buses and its drivers to the UP government in an email.
"All details of the 1,000 buses are attached with this e-mail. Out of them, a few drivers will be reverified and those details will also be mailed to you in a few hours. I hope you will give permission for those buses to ply as soon as possible," Singh had said in the communication to the UP government.
Later, a Rajasthan cabinet minister claimed that the state government had kept 500 private buses ready to ferry migrant workers to Uttar Pradesh but they were not allowed to enter by the Yogi Adityanath government. Vishvendra Singh, minister for tourism and devasthan, said the buses were stopped at Bahej village in Bharatpur's Deeg area in Rajasthan close to the border between the two states.
On Tuesday, the UP government asked Priyanka to provide buses for carrying migrants to the district magistrates of Ghaziabad and Noida. "Directions have been issued to the district magistrates to utilise the buses immediately after checking the permit, fitness, insurance, driving licences of the drivers and details of the conductors," Awasthi said.
However, the war of words seemed to be far from over as the UP government later said that the list of 1,000 buses offered by the Congress contained registration numbers of two-wheelers and cars.
The Congress challenged the UP government to conduct a “physical verification” of the buses it has brought to the state's border to take UP's stranded workers home.
Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya accused the party of coming up with a scam. "The Congress has got trapped in its own net of deceit,” he tweeted in Hindi.
The claim once again reignited the row between the two parties over the issue of migrants.
(With agency inputs)