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Hyderabad During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s six-hour video conference with the Chief Ministers, the strongest suggestion came from the Chief Minister of Telangana: Don’t run trains.
On Monday, the railways began operating trains to clear the avalanche of migrant workers who wanted to go home as cities face the coronavirus outbreak.
Chandrashekar Rao noted that the majority of Covid-19 cases were being detected in large cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. Running passenger trains now would only spread the infection and make containment more difficult.
“It will be difficult to control passengers traveling by train. We are also not equipped to test at all nor can we keep them in quarantine facilities. It will be better if the Center decides not to operate passenger trains for now, “said the prime minister.
He reiterated his demand to reschedule loans taken by state governments, increasing the FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management) limit and also facilitating the transportation of migrant workers to return to their home states.
Chandrasekhar Rao explained how revenues have plummeted due to the pandemic, leaving state governments in a position to pay off their debts. He made a case to reprogram the states’ debt and sought an increase in the FRBM limit that would allow states to borrow more.
Chandrashekar Rao urged the prime minister to declare districts that do not have positive or active cases as green or orange zones, allowing states to restore normality in these districts and the Center to change zones according to the requests of the respective state governments without delay.
He said efforts were underway to make a vaccine for Covid-19 and that several Hyderabad-based companies were making good progress in this direction. The prime minister said he was optimistic that the vaccine would be developed in India in July or August, probably in Hyderabad.
He felt that the current situation in the country would change only after a vaccine is available to people. All states must be sympathetic and humane to migrant workers, he said, because “migrant workers left their families in their places of origin to work in faraway places for a living.” In these difficult times, they will definitely want to visit their families. If we allow them to travel to their places of origin, they will meet their families and return to work peacefully, otherwise there will be riots. ”
Appreciating the Center’s decision to operate special Shramik trains for the transport of migrant workers, the prime minister said the Telangana government was making travel arrangements for the workers after taking all precautions. He told the Prime Minister that the Bihar workers who visited their families had returned to the Telangana state to work in the rice mills.
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