In a total failure of coordination between officials of Anantapur, Kurnool districts and the Indian Railways, migrant labourers from these two districts were forced to return to the places from where they were grouped to be sent to Indore and Gwalior from the Ongole railway station in a train on Sunday.
Seven APSRTC buses from Gooty and Guntakal in Anantapur district and three RTC buses from Kurnool district were flagged off on Sunday morning by assembling all the migrant labourers bound for Madhya Pradesh, when the district officials got information that the train would leave Ongole station in the evening.
For reasons not known till Sunday night, the train was cancelled and all the migrant labourers were asked to be ferried back to their respective places in these two districts.
The district officials meanwhile, tried to prevail upon the Prakasam district officials to temporarily house these near 400 migrant labourers somewhere near Ongole, so that they could take the next scheduled train, but since Prakasam district officers could not give that assurance, they were asked to be brought back after tiring journey of 16 hours both ways put together.
APSRTC officials, meanwhile, were asked to find out the possibility of taking those migrant labourers directly to Indore and Gwalior in those buses, but since there was no official communication on who should bear the near ₹6 lakh fare for such an operation, even that possibility did not fructify.
However, the APSRTC flagged off six buses to Odisha carrying 170 passengers from Prasanthi Nilayam in Puttaparthi on Sunday. The Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust paid the to and fro fare for the students, devotees of Sathya Sai Baba and others from Odisha stranded in the district and one bus each travelled to Bhawanipatna, Bhanjanagar, Bhubaneswar, Anandapur (Keonjhar district), Baripada and Rourkela. The RTC also ran paid services to Chennai, Ooty and Tirunelveli on Saturday.
