A. Narasimhulu (35), his wife Bhagya Lakshmi (32) and children Gurucharan and Yaswanth, are among 25 people who managed to reach Telangana from Mumbai in a bus on Friday afternoon.
They are natives of a village at Mriddoddi mandal of Siddipet district. They left for Mumbai in March to visit Bhagya Lakshmi’s parents and got stuck there after the lockdown was imposed.
However, they managed to pool in some money over the days and started from Mumbai late on Thursday night. They reached Bonguru in Karnataka that has check-posts by both Telangana and Karnataka. This is just a few kilometres from Chiragpally, the border village of Telangana. Many others who came back to the State from Mumbai had migrated there several years back for jobs as maids, masons, electricians and plumbers. But the high incidence of coronavirus in the capital of Maharashtra and no work forced them to return, with no other option. Each of them paid about ₹5,000 for the bus ride to their native places. Many of them claimed that obtaining permission from the authorities to go back home was taking more than two weeks. “We struggled to survive for the last two months. We were dependent on rice distributed by some elected representatives. Rise in the number of COVID cases in Mumbai was another cause for worry. This forced us to return,” said Ch. Bhavani, a woman from the group. “When we called the helpline, we came to know that migrants from Maharashtra were not welcome to Telangana. Even the Maharashtra police told us that the Telangana government is not according enough passes for people to return. There are thousands of people like us stuck in Maharashtra. If the Telangana government does not take care of us, then who will?” asked Ms. Bhavani.
