The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the state and centre governments to not charge travel fares from migrant workers travelling to their native places. “No fare, either by train or bus, shall be charged for migrant workers. Railway fare to be shared by states,” the Supreme Court said on Thursday.
A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, S.K. Kaul and M R Shah asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, about the confusion over the payment of travel fare of stranded migrant workers and said that they should not made to pay for their journey back home.
The court asked some searching questions from the Centre on the plight of migrant workers ranging from as to how long they will have to wait before going to their native places to who will pay for their travel and provide them food and shelter.
“What is the normal time? If a migrant is identified, there must be some certainty that he will be shifted out within one week or ten days at most? What is that time? There had been instances where one state sends migrants but at the border another State says we are not accepting the migrants. We need a policy on this,” the bench told Mehta.
The bench, questioning him over the travel-fare for the migrants, said: In our country, the middlemen will always be there. But we don’t want middlemen to interfere when it comes to payment of fares. There has to be a clear policy as to who will pay for their travel.”