I didn’t name the trains Corona Express, I said people are saying so: Mamata Banerjee responds to Amit Shah’s allegation

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that she had not named the Shramik Express trains — carrying migrant workers to Bengal – as Corona Express. “I had said that people are calling these trains Corona Express because they are bringing people packed together in such a way that it is leading to the spread of Coronavirus,” Banerjee said at a press conference from the state administrative headquarters Nabanna.

On Tuesday, at a “virtual rally” Union home minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Amit Shah had said that Banerjee referring to the Shramik Express trains as “Corona Express” will lead the Trinamool Congress out of Bengal. “Migrant workers were moving from one part of the country to another, but Bengal took the lowest number of trains and insulted the workers by calling the trains ‘Corona Express’. Migrant workers won’t forget the insult and this train will pave the way for the Trinamool Congress’ exit,” Shah had said.

Banerjee on Wednesday added that if the argument from certain quarters had been that lack of social distancing in religious meetings had led to the spread of COVID-19, then the same logic should have applied for the trains. “The announcement of lockdown was made suddenly, people were not given time to return home if they wanted to. And then they were packed into the trains without planning and without social distancing,” she said.

The CM added that most of the 255 trains carrying 11 lakh migrant workers had already arrived in West Bengal, and another 22 trains with 30,000 workers are scheduled to arrive over the next few days. She has been alleging that though the state government had paid for the train fare, the Indian Railways had packed the migrant workers into the trains in such a way without social distancing that it increased their chance of getting COVID-19.

“It is also causing them difficulty to wait in the queue for getting tested once they arrive. So we are directly sending them for quarantine, and if they get tested positive, they are being sent to hospital, otherwise they are being advised to return home and stay in isolation for another week,” Banerjee said.