Haryana buses taking workers home stopped at UP border

GURUGRAM: “I have come this far from Gurugram. If the police send me back, I’ll set off on foot for my home in Faizabad” — this was 50-year-old tea seller Shakti Kumar Tewari narrating his ordeal while peeping out from the window of a Haryana Roadways in Bulandshahr on Monday morning, overhearing drivers making desperate attempts to convince UP cops to let the migrant workers in.
In fact, chaotic scenes had played out at the UP-Haryana border in Bulandshahr around 10am when around 40 Haryana Roadways buses that left from Gurugram to drop over 1,200 stranded migrant workers — including Tewari, who owned a tea stall on Sheetla Mata Mandir Road — were stopped and asked to turn back by UP Police. However, after a long wait, and some taking U-turns, the buses were eventually allowed to proceed on the condition they would drop the passengers all the way to their villages.
“We were called to work at 5am in the morning. And when we reached UP, we were forced to face this chaos only because cops were not ready to listen. We showed them orders but they were relentless and said they can’t take in so many people. When we requested them for the sake of their own people, they asked us to drop each of them to their respective villages,” said Ishwar Singh, a driver.
On Sunday also, 20 Haryana Roadways buses from Ambala and 15 from Yamunanagar carrying migrant workers to the state were sent back from Saharanpur by UP cops. These workers were, however, ferried to the same destination on Monday after senior officials intervened and sorted out the issues. But the confusion has led to fresh apprehensions about waiting for Haryana buses as scores of migrant workers try to get out of the city in trucks.
Meanwhile, Haryana Roadways drivers have again complained of lack of improvement in the conditions in which they are forced to work. “Neither we are given masks nor sanitizers. The buses weren’t even sanitized,” Singh said.
Senior officials, however, claimed talks are on to resolve these issues and that the Haryana government is committed to ferrying all the stranded workers back home.