Punjab seeks Bihar's consent for sending 59 more trains of migrant workers

The Punjab government has sought the consent of the Bihar government for sending 59 more special trains to facilitate the return of migrant workers stranded in the northern state.

"The Punjab government has sought consent to send 59 more special trains to Bihar. Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh has written a letter to his Bihar counterpart Deepak Kumar to seek consent of the Bihar government in this regard," said an official release here.

Consent has been sought to run 12 trains everyday and a detailed list of the 59 trains has also been sent to the Bihar government, it said. Several trains have already been running from Punjab to many cities of Bihar.

The Punjab government has made elaborate arrangements to run 59 more trains as the migrant workers wished to return to their home state, it said. These trains would chug off from Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Mohali, Amritsar, Sirhind and Patiala railway stations to a number of cities in Bihar, which include Buxar, Patna, Saharsa, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur, Chhapra, Hajipur, Gaya, Katihar.

More than 2.5 lakh migrant workers have already been sent safely to their home states in more than 220 trains and this process is still going on, it said.

Notably, most of the trains have already been sent to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. The state government is also sending trains to Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.