The Centre on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court not to smoothen the migration from cities to rural areas as there may be a possibility of three out of 10 workers carrying the Coronavirus to their respective native places.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, however, clarified he was only talking about a possibility, and it should be taken just as a hypothetical statement.
Giving details of the measures taken to mitigate the hardships of migrant workers, he said as many as 21,604 relief camps have set up as on Tuesday for housing them.
Around 6,66,291 workers have been given shelter and 22,88,279 stranded workers have been provided food across the country.
His response came in hearing on PILs seeking food, water, shelter, medical aid in view of the poor plight of migrant workers and their families, including women, kids, elders, who are walking on foot to their villages, amid COVID-19 crisis.
Citing the recent migration from various places, the Centre said, “such migration defeats the very object of the preventive measures taken by the central government."
It said the migrant workers travelling barefoot or otherwise in large numbers inevitably and unknowingly defy the social distancing norm and puts their lives and that of the others in danger. Such group of persons in large number travelling together if permitted to reach their home villages in rural areas is most likely to carry the virus and infect the rural population of their respective villages which have untouched so far, Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla said in an affidavit.
“So far rural India has remained safe from this infection. If migrant workers are permitted to conclude their journey, reach their home village and merge with the rural population, there is a serious and imminent potential of the infection penetrating in rural India also and it will be difficult to contain”, it added.
The Centre also pointed out it has taken "proactive and preemptive timely steps" to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, to contain its spread so far but fake news causing serious panic, was the "single most unmanageable hindrance" in tackling this challenge.
It also said orders for enhancement of testing capacity from a single lab in January to 118 labs and to purchase 40,000 ventilators to meet the contingencies have been issued.