Delays and technical problems in the issue of passes through the Seva Sindhu portal and lack of clarity among officials seem to be slowing down the movement of labourers between States.
Everyday, scores of labourers and others are lining up on the border checkposts set up in Kankumbi on the Goa highway and Kugunoli near Nippani on the Maharashtra border.
Migrants complain that officials were delaying their entry by citing silly reasons and technical formalities.
On Thursday, officers sent back 26 students who had arrived from Gujarat via Maharashtra. They were told that the permission letters given by the district administration of Bharuch in Gujarat were not in the format approved by the Union Home Ministry.
They were travelling towards Sangli when one of them called an activist in Hukkeri. The activist alerted some senior officers in Belagavi who called up the officers at the checkpost to admit them. The officers called the students and asked them to come back.
Similarly, officers sent back a team of around 50 labourers to Goa as their Aadhaar cards were issued by Goan officers.
Basavanneppa Kumbar, a Kannada activist from Madagaon in Goa, told The Hindu that the labourers had obtained Aadhaar cards using Goan addresses as they were staying there for 6 to 9 months a year. But, they all belonged to North Karnataka districts like Bagalkot, Vijayapura and Gadag.
They wanted to go back to their native villages. But the officers at the border checkpost said since they had Goan Aadhaar cards, they could not be considered immigrants from North Karnataka. They have come back to Campala. We have appealed to the Goa Chief Minister to speak to the Karnataka Chief Minister, he said.
Some non-migrants are speaking about their troubles too. The Seva Sindhu portal does not say only migrants should apply. Therefore, I applied for a transit pass to bring my family from Goa. But it was rejected as officers felt only migrants should apply. My application was rejected three times, said Saber Yaragatti, who has been going to the border three times since the lockdown began.
Mr. Yaragatti, who runs a business in Belagavi, is worried because his family is stuck in Goa for the last five weeks. My wife and infant daughter went to go Goa to attend a function. They have been stuck there since the last week of March. I have applied for the interstate pass online and offline, but in vain, he said.
Deputy Commissioner S.B. Bommanahalli said there was some delay in issuing passes due to technical problems like server overload. There may also have been some delays due to lack of communication between two State governments. He said that the officers were not discriminating between migrants and others. But such cases will be looked into, he said.
Mr. Bommanahalli said officers had been asked to follow the MHA guidelines strictly to ensure that only genuine passholders enter. Those who seek to cross State borders should get passes from their State government or district administration. They should also see that their State has communicated their movement to the receiving State, he said.
