“During the first wave, when the country was following lockdowns, when WHO was advising people across the world, all the health experts were suggesting that people should stay where they are…because if a person infected with coronavirus travels, he would carry the infection with him. At that time, Congress leaders stood at stations in Mumbai and distributed free train tickets and encouraged migrants to leave Mumbai so that the burden on Maharashtra can be reduced. You are from UP, you are from Bihar, go and spread corona there. You committed this big sin…You pushed our labourer brothers and sisters into great difficulties,” he said.
Moving on to Delhi, Modi said: “At the time, there was a government in Delhi, the government that is there even now, which sent out jeeps with loudspeakers to jhuggi-jhopri (slum) colonies and told them that there was a big problem, run away. It asked them to go back home and return to their villages. They provided them with buses to leave Delhi and left them midway, creating several problems for workers. Because of this sin, corona spread at a faster pace than before in UP, Uttarakhand and Punjab, and attacked people.”
The response from the two states was swift and sharp.
Kejriwal posted on Twitter: “The Prime Minister’s statement is an outright lie. The country hopes that the Prime Minister will be empathetic towards those who faced hardship because of Covid and those who lost loved ones. It doesn’t suit the Prime Minister to politicise the pain of people.”
In Mumbai, Congress leader and Maharashtra Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat said the Centre “shied away from its responsibility and left the workers to die”. He said the lockdown was “imposed without preparation”.
“After that, the situation of our brothers from UP and Bihar in Mumbai and Maharashtra got worse and they were starving. We are proud of the support provided by the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government and the Congress to the migrant workers during the Corona period,” Thorat said.
NCP leader and State Minister Nawab Malik said: “Modiji is responsible for spreading Covid through the ‘Namaste Trump’ event (in February 2020). Modiji brought Covid into the country. Had he restricted international flights in time, Covid would not have come to India.”
Ashok Chavan, Congress leader and State Minister, accused Modi of “making false allegations” to “cover up his failures in Corona management and with an eye on elections in five states”.
Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi tweeted: “4 hours before lockdown announced, trains stopped, interstate travel stopped. Migrants — majorly daily wage labourers were left stranded. If looking after them — with food and shelter was wrong in the eyes of the PM, then will make this mistake 100 times over… for humanity.”
Significantly, in his speech, Modi did not refer to BJP-ruled Gujarat, which saw a massive exodus of migrants, starting from March 29, 2020, when at least 500 workers from Surat started walking towards the National Highway to go to their homes in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, and clashed with the police who tried to stop them.
According to a written reply in Lok Sabha by the Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways, over 1 crore migrant labourers returned to their home states on foot from across the country during March-June 2020.
As the exodus spiralled out of control, the Railways, in consultation with the Union Home Ministry, launched the Shramik Special service on May 1, starting with six trains from Telangana to Jharkhand, Kerala to Odisha, Maharashtra to UP and MP, and Rajasthan to Bihar and Jharkhand.
According to official figures, 63.19 lakh passengers travelled to their home states in 4,621 Shramik Special trains between May and August. Between May 2 and May 31, Gujarat alone operated 1,017 Shramik trains that carried 15.18 lakh migrants. In fact, a Gujarat government video on the evacuation featured the then CM Vijay Rupani saying: “Today, Gujarat accounts for the maximum number of Shramik trains. Perhaps, this is the biggest migration in independent India which Gujarat has done.”
Most of these migrants had attributed their departure to the lack of a safety net, job losses and fear of infection even as the number of infections steadily rose.
It was in response to these concerns that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on May 13, 2020, the first part of a Rs 20 lakh crore “economic package” with “measures for relief and credit support related to businesses, especially MSMEs to support Indian Economy’s fight against Covid-19.”
The next day, the Finance Minister announced “free food grains supply to migrants for two months” and a “scheme for affordable rental housing complexes for migrant workers and urban poor”. On May 15, 2020, in the third tranche of the package, she announced measures for the agriculture sector.
(With ENS in Delhi & Ahmedabad)
While Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal described Modi's statement as “an outright lie”, at least three ministers from Maharashtra said the Prime Minister was distorting reality “with an eye on elections in five states”. 
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