'We seem to have lost our soul': Congress' Sam Pitroda lists questions amid Covid; exodus

Sam Pitroda, Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, has demanded compensation for the migrant workers and has driven an online campaign to raise voices for the workers. In a video posted on Twitter, Pitroda said, "Migrants need money for their transport, they need Rs 10,000 to be transferred directly to their account."

Here is the video:

He opined that the migrants are the real builders of our cities, factories and growth. "How can we leave them on roads walking like this?", he asked.

He has said that the migrants "do not need plans, programs, and promises. They need money to eat and survive" adding that the nation needs "lot more testing, equipment, health workers, hospital infrastructure, affordable services, medicine, care, concern, and TRUTH."

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Congress' politics amid migrant crisis

The Migrant workers have been among the worst affected due to COVID-19 lockdown owing to no employment, accommodation and money. They have been forced to travel back to their home states in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal Chhattisgarh among others. 

Sam Pitroda's concern for migrants comes even as Congress [his own party] has made the migrant workers' crisis its main political agenda. On May 16, Priyanka Vadra wrote to UP CM Yogi Adityanath, urging him to permit the Congress party to run 1,000 buses to ferry migrant workers back to their native place. The UP administration accepted this request, asking the Congress to send the list of busses with their registration numbers and other details. However, a list of 1,000 buses was sent and more than half of the registration numbers were fake, 297 were junk buses, 98 were autorickshaws and vehicles like ambulance, 68 vehicles were without any papers. Later, as the Congress tried to spare its leader's blushes, it sent buses to every border it could reach.

Reacting on the politics of Priyanka Vadra, Congress leader from Rae Bareli, Aditi Singh, who was once close confidante of Priyanka Vadra and Rahul Gandhi, lambasted her own party in a tweet. She even questioned the party leadership why the buses were not sent to Congress-ruled states such as Rajasthan Maharashtra and Punjab which has many stranded migrants.

"What is the need for such low politics at the time of disaster? A list of one thousand buses has been sent, but in this too, there is a fraud of more than half the buses. 297 buses are junk, 98 are auto-rickshaws and vehicles like ambulances, 68 vehicles are without papers, what a cruel joke? If there were buses then why didn't you deploy them in Rajasthan, Punjab, Maharashtra?" she asked in her tweet.

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"When thousands of children from U.P were stuck in Kota, where were these buses? Let alone their homes, these children were not even dropped off to the border by Congress. Yogi Adityanath government deployed buses overnight and got these children home and was praised by the Rajasthan Chief Minister himself," she said in another tweet.

Congress has suspended Aditi Singh from the post of General Secretary of the party's women wing on grounds of indiscipline. She has also been removed from all official groups of Congress party after her stand against her own party.