Frightening picture’: Prashant Kishor tweets video of migrants crying, begging
Election strategist Prashant Kishor has tweeted a video of scores of migrant workers, locked inside a cell crying and asking to be set free, and sought the resignation of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar.
Thousands of migrant workers have walked hundreds of kilometres from big cities along with their children back to their villages after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown on March 24.
These stranded migrants have said they have left the cities as they do not have the money for food or rent but health experts warned that an exodus would defeat the purpose of the lockdown of breaking the chain of infections.
“Another frightening picture of the government’s efforts to save people from the corona infection. For the poor people who have reached Bihar from various parts of the country after facing hardship and trouble, Nitish Kumar’s arrangement for social distancing and quarantine is heart-wrenching,” Prashant Kishor tweeted.
One of the men inside the cell said he wants to go to his home in Siwan, around 130 km from state capital of Patna, to meet his sick son.
“I have come from Ahmedabad. They have been telling us we will let you go since the morning and that a bus is coming. But there has been no bus. They are not letting us go,” the man, weeping with his mouth covered with a handkerchief, is heard saying in the video.
“I want to go, Sir. Please get me out,” the man says as others around him issue the same request in tears.
Kishor was expelled from the Nitish Kumar’s ruling Janata Dal(United) in January by state his one-time mentor, Nitish Kumar, for criticising the party’s support for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
He has been regularly tweeting videos and photographs of migrants and the problems they have been facing during the lockdown announced till April 14.
The Centre on Sunday ordered the “effective sealing” of borders to stop the exodus and announced measures to help those in need of shelter and food.
The number of people infected with the coronavirus in the country has risen to 1071, including 942 active cases, 99 recovered patients and 29 who died.
HT
