New Delhi, July 15 (Inditop.com) Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) MP from Bihar Shahnawaz Hussain has written to the urban development ministry to pay compensation and give jobs in the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to family members of workers who died at a DMRC construction site Sunday.
The issue has also yet again brought into focus the larger issue of millions of Biharis migrating to various states in the country, due to the lack of adequate job opportunities back home. Three of those who died in the accident were youngsters from a village in the state.
“I have written to the urban development minister (S. Jaipal Reddy) to pay them compensation and give employment to at least one person from the families of those who died,” Hussain, who is an MP from Bhagalpur, to which three of the workers who were killed in the mishap belonged, told IANS.
He said he had initiated the process to identify workers from his constituency in Delhi and create a database of migrants to ensure he could help them in trouble.
Due to the lack of employment opportunities in Bihar, millions migrate to Delhi, Mumbai, Surat, Bangalore, parts of Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and Haryana in search of work.
According to the 2001 census, more than 1.6 million people out of Bihar’s 8.2 crore population had migrated to other states. Most of them are landless farmers, poor workers and a large number of skilled labour from urban areas.
The migration of Bihari workers has been on for decades but it has increased in the last two decades. They had often been attacked in other states.
Bihari migrant workers have been targeted in Mumbai, Pune and Nashik in Maharashtra and in Assam in the last couple of months.
Census 1991 brought out an interesting trend. The population entering Bihar was 364,337 and that exiting the state was more than three times higher at 1,226,839.
When told that a newspaper report quoted the villagers of Lattipur in Bhagalpur district blaming him and the state government for having failed to provide employment opportunities back home, Hussain said migration from Bihar was “a larger issue”.
The three deceased workers – Pappu Yadav, 25, Amit Yadav, 25, and Niranjan Yadav, 18 – are from Lattipur, which sends hundreds across the country for jobs.
Hussain was quick to clarify that this village was not part of his constituency earlier and had been included in the April-May elections after delimitation.
The former central minister said checking migration should be a joint effort of the state government and the central government.
“This is why we are asking the centre to provide a special package for the state. Since I come from the ruling NDA (National Democratic Alliance) in Bihar, I am not saying it is not my government’s responsibility to check migration,” he added.
