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# Bengal

Train with over 1100 labourers, pilgrims reaches Bengal

Flower petals were showered on the train as it chugged into the platform, with state ministers Moloy Ghatak and Tapan Dasgupta waiting at the station to receive the passengers.

The Statesman Desk | Kolkata | May 6, 2020 4:14 pm

Train with over 1100 labourers, pilgrims reaches Bengal

Young family members of migrant labourers react from a train window on their arrival from the Western Indian state of Rajasthan through a special train organised to bring back migrant labourers and pilgrims to their hometowns at the Dankuni Railway station after the government eased a nationwide lockdown imposed as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus, some 25 Km north of Kolkata on May 5, 2020. (Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP)

Over 1,100 labourers and pilgrims were greeted with flowers on Tuesday as they reached Dankuni in West Bengal’s Howrah district in a train from Rajasthan. The 24-coach train, which left Ajmer in the western state on Monday morning, reached Dankuni station at 10.40 am, official sources said.

Flower petals were showered on the train as it chugged into the platform, with state ministers Moloy Ghatak and Tapan Dasgupta waiting at the station to receive the passengers.

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All 1,186 passengers, including women and children, were subjected to medical examination for any COVID-19 symptom at a camp set up by the Health Department outside the station.

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Those exhibiting COVID- 19-like symptoms would be provided requisite medical attention, while the rest would be transported to their destination in different districts of the state by buses, the sources said.

The coaches were emptied one at a time, maintaining social distancing norms, they said. The Rajasthan chief secretary had recently written to his West Bengal counterpart, seeking his consent for sending home the stranded pilgrims and labourers from Ajmer and other places in the western state, amid the lockdown.

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