‘Sonia Gandhi paid for your ticket’: Punjab Congress MLA distributes flyers to migrants at station
Amarinder Raja Warring arrived at Bathinda Railway Station with a group of Congress workers on Sunday to see off the migrants heading to Bihar.
A Congress MLA from Punjab distributed flyers at the Bathinda railway station on Sunday, claiming that his party president Sonia Gandhi paid for the tickets of the migrant workers who were leaving for their hometowns, NDTV reported on Monday.
Amarinder Raja Warring went to the railway station with a group of Congress workers to “see off” the labourers on their journey to Muzaffarpur in Bihar and also made a speech. His flyers read: “Your ticket was paid for by Sonia Gandhi.”
“Congress party, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, [Punjab Congress chief] Sunil Jakhar are sending you [home],” Warring claimed. “Everything is written in this pamphlet, you can read it at leisure on your journey.”
The Centre has decided to run over 300 “Shramik Special” trains for the migrants to return home. On May 4, Gandhi had said that the Congress will pay for the migrants’ tickets, after the Union government decided to charge them Rs 50. The next day, the Centre backtracked, denying that it had decided to charge the labourers, despite its own circular attesting to the same. Later, it clarified that it would pay 85% of the fare, with the remaining being subsidised by state governments.
On Monday, the Narendra Modi-led government announced that the trains will run at full capacity, and have three stops, excluding the destination station. The Indian Railways has operated a total of 468 “Shramik Special” trains since May 1 to ferry more than five lakh migrant workers as of Monday.