Scattered initiatives to evacuate migrant workers, students and pilgrims stranded across the country on Sunday coalesced into a more coordinated action plan initiated by states like Odisha, Maharashtra and Gujarat even as Karnataka signalled its reluctance to jump right in, flagging the “risk” of immediately bringing back people stuck in Covid-endemic states as a “national issue”.
While Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik engaged with counterparts Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra and Vijay Rupani in Gujarat to work out a “safe and dignified exit plan” for migrant workers from his state, Karnataka said it would temporarily restrict itself to evacuating a batch of 272 students stuck in Rajasthan’s Kota.
“We are trying to ascertain the whereabouts of migrant labourers stranded across the nation. Considering the high number of Covid-19 cases in our bordering states, whether to ferry them back or not is a big concern. We continue to deliberate on the matter and will discuss this tomorrow with the chief minister. It is a national issue,” Karnataka labour minister Shivram Hebbar told TOI even as pressure mounted from the opposition to start evacuating the state’s stranded two lakh-strong migrant workforce like several states have already done.
Odisha’s strategy for evacuation of migrant workers from various states includes compulsory registration of each pote