The labourers from Uttar Pradesh are on way to Bihar, where they work in brick kilns.

Lucknow:

Footage from the Aligarh railway station in western Uttar Pradesh shot on Tuesday afternoon shows zero social distancing as hundreds of labourers and their families from Aligarh and adjoining districts gathered to board trains bound for Bihar where they work in brick kilns.

Cellphone videos from the station show hundreds of labourers — men, women and children — with sacks on their heads gathered outside the railway station, moving inside slowly. Another video shows more people sitting next to each other on the ground as the queue moves at a slow pace. Both videos make it clear that no social distancing norms are maintained.

A third video shows a group of policemen directing a queue of labourers and their families inside the railway station, but again with no social distancing.

Asked about the lack of social distancing at a time when there is a surge in coronavirus cases across Uttar Pradesh and the rest of the country, Rajvir Diler, BJP parliamentarian from the adjoining Hathras district, who was at the station to flag off the Bihar-bound trains, pleaded helplessness.

“When crowds are more and the space is less, this can happen. We are trying to manage the situation,” the MP said.

“All three trains are going to Gaya in Bihar. We are trying to implement social distancing, but the labourers have a lot of luggage and there are many children. We have sanitised the trains properly too,” Kuldev Singh, a senior government official present at the railway station, told the media.