Migrant workers hurl stones at cops in Gujarat, demand transport

In a recurrence of the violence by migrants on the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border on Thursday (May 14), a group of 15O migrants hurled stones at police personnel in Dahej industrial area of Gujarat’s Bharuch district on Friday (May 15) morning, demanding transportation to reach home.

Police lobbed two teargas shells to clear the mob that had gathered in the area to demand a return passage to their home states, Bharuch district superintendent of police Rajendrasinh Chudasama told PTI.

The past few days have witnessed protests by migrant workers in the district who have demanded to be sent home in Shramik Special trains.

“Even on Thursday, many of them took to the streets. But they went back after I personally appealed to them to be patient as their online registration was done and they only had to wait for confirmation from the authorities,” Chudasama said.

However, 150 of them once again came out on Friday, voicing the same demand and pelted police vehicles with stones, he said.

Botad Town in Gujarat, on Friday, however, witnessed a rather peaceful protest by around 400 labourers from Bihar, who demanded immediate arrangements to be made for them to send them home.

Before things could get out of hand, the police stopped the protesters at a market and convinced them to wait for confirmation of travel arrangements from the authorities, an official said.

Botad district collector Vishal Gupta claimed that migrants are stuck because approvals for sending them back are pending from the Bihar government since May 10.

“The district administration has made all arrangements to send the migrants back. We have done their medical check-ups and arranged for buses to ferry them to the railway station.

“There is a delay because the Bihar government has not given approvals for trains,” he said.

In a similar occurrence on Thursday, migrant workers headed for Uttar Pradesh and Bihar from Maharashtra threw stones at policemen at Sendhwa, on the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border, accusing the district administration of not making arrangement of food and transportation for them even after a wait of more than nine hours.