More than 700 pilgrims and tourists from Bengal have been left stranded in Haridwar, unable to return home with train services suspended on March 22 before the central government announced the Covid-19 lockdown two days later at a notice of barely four hours.
The visitors gathered at Vishnu Ghat along the Ganga on Wednesday, and again on Thursday, chanting slogans against the Centre for not alerting the people before “immobilising the nation”.
Sources said around 200 of the visitors protested on Wednesday and around a hundred on Thursday.
Sanchali Chatterjee, 30, a teacher from North 24-Parganas, told The Telegraph they didn't have enough money left to even buy medicines for the older people in their group that had reached the Uttarakhand temple town on March 17.
“We, 11 members of a family, reached the town on March 17 and went to Mussoorie on March 19. Our return ticket was from Haridwar on March 23 but the train services were suspended from March 22,” she said over the phone from Haridwar.
“My father-in-law and my father, who are in their late 60s, have cardiac problems but we are not able to get their medicines here.”
The only support they had got from the local administration so far, she said, was supply of foodgrains they have had to cook for themselves.
“The hotel manager reduced the tariff by 50 per cent on our request and has given a separate room to use as a kitchen. But there is huge confusion on the part of the governments,” she added.
“Every day we register ourselves at one or the other place so that we are sent back home. We have also registered ourselves on a portal of the Bengal government. Today, the hotel staff told us we were expected to go to a nearby medical camp for blood tests. But we don’t think it is safe here. The government can certainly do our medical examination when we are back in our state.”
A police source said around 450 of the tourists and pilgrims were from Calcutta and the remaining 250 were from other parts of Bengal.
“We request the governments of Uttarakhand and Bengal to make arrangements for our homeward journey as we are exhausted and without any money to pay the tariff of hotels and dharamshalas where the people are stuck for the past month and a half,” Krishna Sridhar, a resident of Siliguri, told local reporters.
Sridhar had reached Haridwar along with six family members on March 17 for a 10-day pilgrimage but couldn’t return after the trains were cancelled.
“Many stranded people from Bengal have slipped into depression,” said Mithu Mukherjee, a resident of Calcutta. “Some keep crying the whole day.”
Ashish Ghildiyal, the tehsildar of Haridwar, said: “We are waiting for acceptance from the Bengal government that they would receive their people when we send them from here.”
Mukherjee said the stranded visitors from Bengal wanted to request the two state governments to start thinking about “the lives and dignity” of the people and “forget politics for a while”.
“The Uttarakhand government is claiming that it wants to send us back home but the Bengal government is not showing any interest. We don’t want to get into such allegations and counter-allegations. We want to reach home safely.”
Utpal Kumar Singh, chief secretary, Uttarakhand, said: “There are 10,500 people who had registered themselves to go to other states, out of which we have already sent 3,550 back. We are doing arrangements for the others.”