Srinagar
More than 62,000 labourers from occupied Jammu and Kashmir, who have been stranded in various parts of India amid Covid-19 lockdown are facing shortage of food and other commodities.
The actual number of the stranded labourers might be much more as these 62,000 labourers are only those whose distressed calls were received on the helpline numbers, set up by the local authorities in the territory.
Out of the total number of registered stranded labourers in the Indian states, a total of around 20,000 are stuck in Himachal Pradesh (HP), followed by Maharashtra with 13,000 while in Uttar Pradesh around 10,000 are stranded.
Similarly, in Punjab the number of labourers stranded from Kashmir is 3000 while the figures in Delhi, Uttrakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Karnataka, West Bengal and Goa stand at 2500, 2000, 3000, 1700, 1500, 1000, 300 and 1800 respectively. In addition, as many as 154 people of Jammu and Kashmir are stranded in Nepal.
However, there could be many other stranded Kashmiri residents in India as the number symbolizes only those of labourers, who had made distressed calls and the exact number could swell in near future.—SABAH
