Desperate to go home, migrant workers march to Secretariat

NEW DELHI: Bharat Lal looked haggard and exasperated outside Delhi Secretariat on Saturday. His tiredness was because he has been walking for the past six days in a desperate effort to reach home in Rae Bareli in UP from Suratgarh in Rajasthan. His exasperation was at Delhi Police stopping him on Vikas Marg and refusing to let the group proceed further. There were many others on the footpaths near the secretariat on Saturday, all of them migrants seeking the state government’s help in returning to their home villages.
“Seven of us started walking from Suratgarh on May 3 and have covered around 400 km to reach Delhi.So far, all the policemen we encountered on the way proved very helpful, even giving us money for food. But at this picket in Delhi, we were stopped and the cops kept pushing us back. They ordered us to return to Rajasthan,” said the exhausted Lal. “We have walked so many kilometres and have kept walking only because of the thought that home was gradually getting closer. Now we are stuck here.” His tired companions were dozing by his side.
Milling around the walkers from Rajasthan were many who had come from different parts of Delhi, some even from Haryana, having heard that the government was providing trains to take migrant workers back to their states. “We see so many people like us being put in trains. Why not us?” said one distraught man. “At the district office, they told us we could leave if we had a vehicle of our own. It seems opening liquor shops is more important for the authorities than sending us home.”
Till Saturday afternoon, the migrant daily-wage earners had made several attempts to cross the picket on Vikas Marg only to be rebuffed each time. They then squatted on the footpath near the Delhi Secretariat. Massaging their aching soles, sipping water from bottles and wiping sweat with gamchas, the despondent people discussed among themselves how to negotiate the barricade.
Among them was Narayan Das, whose home is in Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh. He has been staying under a bridge in Meer Vihar in west Delhi after being turned back by police at the Noida border when attempting to leave the capital. “My wife recently had a uterus operation and is on medication and my son’s wife is scheduled to deliver, but we are stuck here,” he said, pointing to his wife and his two sons, aged 21 and 25 years. “We had reached the Noida border, but police put us in a bus and dropped us back in Delhi. We want to go back and never return.”
There were many who had walked from different parts of the city. “Why can’t we go? If they allow us, we are even ready to walk home. I will survive on half a roti, but I will not come back to Delhi,” declared Jai Kishan Shukla, who had come from Daryaganj and wanted to return to his village of Bhinga Shrawasthi just ahead of Lucknow. He grumbled that while crowds were jostling around at liquor stores, the migrants were being told their travelling would spread the corona infection.
Shukla, who made rakhis for Old Delhi sellers, went with some friends to the DM’s office, but were told since that they had no vehicle they couldn’t leave the city. “So, we came to Delhi Secretariat, but the officers at the gate didn’t allow us to enter,” he muttered angrily. He alleged that he hadn’t been able to get rations because the government distributors said his Aadhaar showed a Uttar Pradesh address. He said some friends had reached home on foot and he had tried too, only to be stopped by the police.