After being stranded for more than two months in north middle Andaman, Jitendra Malto landed in Ranchi, the capital of his home state Jharkhand. Along with him, another 179 workers from the state, who had migrated to the union territory of Andaman & Nicobar Islands to work as labourers in various construction projects included road building, have returned home. The chartered flight, fully funded by the state government at the cost of Rs 21 lakh (approximately) took off from Port Blair and landed in Ranchi today evening.

“I never imagined I would board a plane [aircraft] and return home. It still feels like a dream — a pleasant dream of homecoming” Malto, who belongs to Littipada in Pakur district, told Gaon Connection before he boarded a bus, organised by the state government, to take him home to his family 370-kilometre away.

Ram Nath Sau from Dumka district of the state is another such worker who has returned in the chartered flight after being stuck at the Nicobar Islands for two months.

The plan to airlift these workers was operationalised in the last two days under the guidance of the state chief minister Hemant Soren and a special team. Communications were held with the authorities in Port Blair to get these workers stranded at various locations of the islands territory to the airport from where they were airlifted.

Plans are afoot to airlift more workers of the state from far-flung areas of the country, informed a state official.

It was only yesterday that 60 ‘migrant’ workers stranded in a remote village in Leh in Ladakh Union Territory were airlifted by the state government and brought back in a chartered flight funded by the Jharkhand government. For the first time in the country, a state government is airlifting its poor, ‘migrant’ workers amid the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown.

On March 25, the country was put under a nationwide lockdown by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a period of three weeks. But, the lockdown has been extended a couple of times and even after two months, the migrant workers are still stranded in various parts of the country. Many are walking kilometres to return home and some have collapsed on their way and died. The Centre has started running Shram Shakti trains to transport the workers back to their home states. Some workers have died during the train journey, too.

As per a public database of non-COVID19 deaths, between March 19 and May 30, at least 667 people have died during the lockdown due to various factors (exhaustion, starvation, accidents, police brutality, etc). This comes to nine deaths every day.