“Withdraw all complaints against migrant workers under the Disaster Management Act of 2005,” a Bench led by Ashok Bhushan said in a directive.

The court ordered the Railways to provide States with 171 more Shramik Special trains to transport migrant workers. It ordered the States and the Union Territories to complete their transportation within the next 15 days.The court squarely placed the onus on the Centre, the States and the Union Territories to provide details of employment and benefits schemes to returning migrant workers.

Counselling centres

The Bench directed that counselling centres should be set up to reach out to the migrants and explain the various schemes framed for their rehabilitation and employment.

The States and the Union Territories should conduct extensive skill-mapping of the workers at village and block levels.

Counselling centres should freely provide information and “extend helping hand” to those workers who wanted to return to their places of past employment.

Last week, the government had told the Supreme Court that not a single migrant worker died in Shramik trains due to lack of food, water or medication. Their deaths were really due to “earlier illnesses”.

In the previous hearing, the court had asked the government to complete the transportation of migrant workers, whether by rail or road, in the next 15 days. It had said the exodus could not continue indefinitely.

The court was hearing a suo motu case on the migrant workers’ crisis. It reserved the case for final orders to be pronounced on June 9.

Explaining reports about deaths in Shramik special trains, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had briefed the court that “an enquiry found that no deaths were caused by lack of food, water or medication... The people who died had some earlier illnesses. Railways has the details. People who showed signs of illness were shifted to the nearest hospitals”.

Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi said news reports showed that a total of 80 individuals lost their lives while travelling on the Shramik Specials. However, no official number had been released till date. Further, media reports again said a total of 644 migrant labourers died in the lockdown. “Absence of data on the actual number of migrant labourers aggravates these calamities by leaving the administering agencies, under-prepared to deal with the challenges,” Mr. Singhvi had argued.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal said the government had not yet revealed the “minimum standards” of hygiene, food and water quality it had mandated in relief camps, etc.But Mr. Mehta had said the “substantial part of the ordeal is over”.

Shramik trains have been operational since May 1 to transport stranded migrant workers during the national lockdown amid the pandemic. The Railways has run 4,228 trains to transport stranded migrant workers till June 3