{"id":9721,"date":"2020-06-10T17:42:04","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T12:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/34.22.110.190\/english\/?p=9721"},"modified":"2021-01-05T03:07:35","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T21:37:35","slug":"i-didnt-name-the-trains-corona-express-i-said-people-are-saying-so-mamata-banerjee-responds-to-amit-shahs-allegation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/i-didnt-name-the-trains-corona-express-i-said-people-are-saying-so-mamata-banerjee-responds-to-amit-shahs-allegation\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn\u2019t name the trains Corona Express, I said people are saying so: Mamata Banerjee responds to Amit Shah’s allegation"},"content":{"rendered":"

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that she had not named the Shramik Express trains — carrying migrant workers to Bengal \u2013 as Corona Express. \u201cI had said that people are calling these trains Corona Express<\/span><\/a> because they are bringing people packed together in such a way that it is leading to the spread of Coronavirus,\u201d Banerjee said at a press conference from the state administrative headquarters Nabanna.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, at a \u201cvirtual rally\u201d Union home minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Amit Shah had said that Banerjee referring to the Shramik Express trains as \u201cCorona Express\u201d will lead the Trinamool Congress out of Bengal. \u201cMigrant 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 \u2018Corona Express\u2019. Migrant workers won\u2019t forget the insult and this train will pave the way for the Trinamool Congress\u2019 exit,\u201d Shah had said<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cThe 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d Banerjee said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mamata Banerjee reacted a day after Amit Shah alleged she had called the trains Corona Express. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":9722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99,375,378,246,346,121,49,377],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-amit-shah","9":"tag-centre-state-relations","10":"tag-containment-zones","11":"tag-coronavirus-in-india","12":"tag-coronavirus-in-kolkata","13":"tag-indian-railways","14":"tag-mamata-banerjee","15":"tag-migrant-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9721"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=9721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}