Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray lock horns over Shramik Special trains

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray locked horns over the issue of running Shramik Special trains to ferry migrant workers from Maharashtra to their home states.

Hours after the Maharashtra chief minister blamed the Railways for not providing the required number of trains to the state to ferry migrant workers, Piyush Goyal in his series of tweets took a dig at the Thackeray on Sunday night.

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Goyal posted around six tweets demanding the list of passengers from the Maharashtra government to operate trains. As per railways guidelines, the sending states have to submit a list of passengers to the railways and bring those passengers to railways railway stations.

''Where is the list for 125 trains from Maharashtra? As of 2 am, received a list of only 46 trains of which 5 are to West Bengal and Odisha which cannot operate due to cyclone Amphan. We are notifying only 41 trains for today despite being prepared for 125 !!!'' Goyal tweeted at 2 am last night.

Earlier Goyal also tweeted saying, ''We are waiting and working all night to prepare for tomorrow's trains schedule. Please send passenger lists within the next hour.''

Goyal also shared a press release from Central Railway which said it complied with Maharashtra Government and operated a number of trains as demanded by the state government. However, few trains scheduled for Odisha and West Bengal got cancelled due to cyclone, the Central Railway said.

The political slugfest between two leaders started after the chief minister on Sunday alleged that the national transporter was not operating a sufficient number of trains despite the requests from the state government.

Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha member and senior leader Sanjay Raut also joined the fight and tweeted: "Maharashtra government has given the list of required trains to the Railway Ministry. The only request from Piyush Ji is that the train should reach the station at which it should arrive. The train leaving for Gorakhpur should not reach Orissa."

Earlier, the Railways said it was ready to operate any number of Shramik Special trains and receiving states permission was not required but sending states had to give the list of passengers. The Railways on Saturday said it has operated 2,600 trains since May 1 and ferried over 35 lakh migrant workers. It further said that it would operate 2,600 trains in next 10 days to ferry 36 lakh migrant workers.