The Karnataka government’s last-minute cancellation of special trains for homesick migrant workers prompted a court petition on Wednesday and sparked allegations that the labourers were being treated as “slaves”.

The builders’ lobby contested reports about having got the government to cancel the trains so it could resume construction, saying it had merely asked the authorities to “stop a mass exodus”.

Chand Mohammed Sheikh, a migrant worker from Nadia, said Tuesday night’s cancellations had shocked the thousands of labourers looking forward to catch trains home on Wednesday.

“It’s wrong to give the impression that we are just slaves with no rights. I request the Centre and state governments to understand this and give us trains,” Sheikh said.

Following the cancellations, the CPIML Liberation-backed All India Central Council of Trade Unions petitioned Karnataka High Court seeking relief for the migrants.

“We (have sought) urgent hearing on May 7,” council general secretary and lawyer Clifton Rozario told The Telegraph.

“Denial of travel facilities and forced labour are serious violation of their (labourers’) rights.”

The council had earlier moved an interlocutory application seeking judicial intervention to ensure the supply of basic necessities and the payment of pending wages to all the migrant workers.

While it’s the Centre that runs trains, it’s doing so for migrant workers only at the request of state governments. What Karnataka did is withdraw a past application for the trains.

While the Congress termed the government decision “heartless”, CPM labour arm Citu called it “inhuman and cruel”.

“The migrant workers are furious and disappointed and might even walk home in large numbers,” R. Kaleemullah, state coordination committee member of socio-political organisation Swaraj Abhiyan, told this newspaper.

Sheikh, the labourer from Nadia, said the cancellations were particularly heartbreaking because the police had earlier “gathered details of thousands of workers, including which state they wanted to go to”.

He said about 2,000 workers from his neighbourhood — the Thubarahalli slum in Bangalore’s eastern suburbs — had applied for transport.

Swaraj Abhiyan leaders moved around Bangalore’s labour colonies on Wednesday, assembling workers and discussing their next move.

“Bangalore alone has 3 lakh migrant workers from the eastern and northern states. They endured the lockdown without wages, surviving on handouts from voluntary organisations. All they want is to go home and meet their families,” Kaleemullah said.

Letter leak

The state government did not officially announce the cancellations, which were broadcast by the electronic media on Tuesday night after a letter from principal secretary (revenue) N. Manjunatha Prasad to the railways was “leaked”.

“With reference to the above we had requested to run two train services every day for 5 days (total 10 train services) except for tomorrow i.e. 06.05.2020 for which three trains can be arranged and the time of departure can be at 9.00 am, 12 noon and 3.00 pm departing from Bangalore to Dhanapur, Bihar,” the May 5 letter to the general manager, South Western Railway, said.

“Since the train services are not required from tomorrow the letter cited under reference above is withdrawn.”

PTI reported that Karnataka’s initial letter requesting the 11 trains over five days had also been sent on Tuesday, just hours before the withdrawal of the request.

State education minister S. Suresh Kumar had on Monday said that six trains had left with migrant workers since Sunday, carrying labourers to Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur and Patna.

Builders’ stance

The cancellations came shortly after a delegation from builders’ association Credai had on Tuesday met chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa, along with representatives from other industries, seeking help to resume construction.

“We didn’t ask the government to stop labourers from going home. We only requested the government to stop a mass exodus since that would do no good to either party,” said Suresh Hari, chairman of the Bangalore chapter of Credai.

“We only wanted a clearance to kick-start construction. But that cannot happen without workers, which is why we requested the government to ensure adequate availability of workers, by jointly providing incentives.”

Hari denied that forcing migrant workers to the construction sites amounted to endangering their lives in a state that has been unable to flatten the Covid-19 curve.

“Credai has already developed an SOP (standard operating procedure) that governs the safety guidelines for all employees at construction sites,” Hari said.

State Congress president D.K. Shivakumar said that if the government wanted the workers to stay back, it should have “taken them into confidence”.

“The government and the builders should have provided them with some incentive,” he said.

“It’s their right, we shouldn’t stop them. When NRIs can come home, we have to allow the workers to go home,” he added, referring to the Centre flying in many NRIs free of cost.

V.J.K. Nair, Citu state general secretary, smelt a “conspiracy to depress wages”.

“By forcing them to stay back, the government has denied them the chance to bargain for better wages,” he said.

A statement from Citu president K. Hemalatha stressed that the employers who now wanted the workers to stay back had earlier left them mostly unpaid during the lockdown, exposing them to “unimaginable miseries and hunger”.

It noted that the state government was now “readily obliging the capitalist lobby in their cruel game-plan”.

‘Hardly anything’

Yediyurappa on Wednesday announced a Rs 1,610-crore economic package targeting construction workers, farmers, weavers, horticulturists, barbers and drivers of auto-rickshaws and taxis.

However, the migrant workers, at least, seemed unimpressed.

Under the package, construction workers are to get a one-time dole of Rs 3,000 over and above the Rs 2,000 said to have been transferred to their accounts last week. Most of the state’s 15.8 lakh construction workers are from the eastern and northern states.

Ajay Kumar, a construction labourer from Bihar who had been eagerly “waiting for a train”, however, told this newspaper that neither he nor his friends had yet received the Rs 2,000 dole.

“And this Rs 3,000 announced today is hardly anything. Each one of us pays a room rent of Rs 2,000 in a slum,” he said.

While the state’s 54,000 handloom weavers will get Rs 2,000 each, Rs 5,000 each will be transferred to the bank accounts of 60,000 washermen and washerwomen, 2.3 lakh barbers and 7.75 lakh auto and taxi drivers.