In a written reply, Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar says 1.06 crore migrant workers returned to their home states during the lockdown.
A week after the Labour and Employment Ministry informed the Lok Sabha that there was no data available of the number of migrant workers who died during the lockdown, the Ministry told the Rajya Sabha on Monday that it was collecting the data from States and Union Territories.
Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar’s response to several questions about migrant workers on September 14 had been “no such data is maintained”.
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However, he had informed Lok Sabha that 1.04 crore migrant workers had returned to their home states during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. The government had faced flak over the lack of data on the number of deaths and job losses of migrant workers…