Over 500 youths from Assam working in various parts of the country were reportedly stranded in various railway stations in Bengal due to cancellation of trains and lockdown in the neighbouring state.
All railway operations have been suspended till March 31 in wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
No passenger train will be allowed to operate till March 31 while trains finishing their journeys will be terminated at the point. Only goods trains will run from March 22 midnight till March 31 midnight.
“What are we going to do now? We also tried to check into hotels but they are also not allowing us since we came from Kerala. We then sought the police’s help but they also asked us to go away from the station as there is a lockdown in the area. Where will we go now?” asked Saiful Karim of Morigaon.
He was returning home from a packaging factory in Kerala and is now stranded at Howrah station, along with over 300 others.
The Bengal government on Sunday declared a complete lockdown in Calcutta, almost all municipal towns in 16 districts and a complete shutdown in the various districts, including Howrah, from 5pm on Monday till Friday midnight, exempting only critical and essential services from its ambit.
A few hundred others from the state’s Nagaon, Guwahati, Kamrup, Bongaigaon and Barpeta were also reportedly stranded at Sealdah railway station.
“We were already been screened at various railway stations and don’t have any sick members. Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal must intervene,” said Bipul Kalita who had returned from Odisha where he works as a travel agent.
Earlier, the chief minister’s office had arranged a stay for a group of pilgrims stuck in Delhi.
Northeast Frontier Railway officials said there were three trains currently on their way to Guwahati.
“One train from Pune, one from Mangalore and one from Rajasthan are currently heading towards Guwahati. These trains will reach Assam by Tuesday afternoon. But no trains will be available after that till March 31,” informed the public relations officer of Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR), Nripen Bhattacharya.
