Image Source: ECONOMIC TIMES

Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday announced that the state government will start sending migrant workers back to their home states in special trains from Tuesday onwards. Just few hours before the announcement, about 1,500 migrant workers, mainly from north India, had hit the streets of Hyderabad in protest on Sunday night, demanding to be sent back. On the same day, three new coronavirus cases were reported in the state, while 40 other patients recovered from it. Telangana government proposes 40 special trains a day for one week from Tuesday to send back home stranded migrant workers, said the Chief Minister's Office. The decision to send back migrant workers came was apprised in a late night statement from the chief minister’s office on Monday, which also said officials from the state Medical and Health department requested to not provide any relaxation in Hyderabad and its surrounding districts of Ranga Reddy, Medchal and Vikarabad, as those have higher percentages of Covid-19 cases in the state. It was pointed out that cases in other districts have decreased. About 66% of the state’s total cases are from those four districts alone, where most of the cases detected over the last 10 days have been from. The state cabinet will meet on Tuesday to decide about relaxing the lockdown, among other issues. On Monday, the state reported just three new cases, taking the total number of Covid-19 cases to 1,085 in Telangana, of which 585 people have been discharged from hospitals post recovery. As of now, there are 471 active cases in the state. All three people who tested positive for the virus on Monday were from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) area. With this, the number of patients who have recovered from Covid-19 are more in number than the number of active cases in the state. About 1,500 workers on Monday, who hail mostly from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, staged a protest rally in Hyderabad from Shaamshabad to Bahadurpura, demanding to be sent back home. This was the second protest in the last two days, as about 1,000 migrants in the city’s Toli Chowki area also witnessed a similar protest. The police managed to contain the matter in both cases. The chief minister’s statement is likely to assuage the worries of workers. On 1 May, a train from the city’s Lingampalli station, carrying nearly 1,200 migrants, left for Hatia in Jharkhand. It was the first special train arranged for the migrant workers.