Karnataka CM BS Yediyurappa’s exit window helped migrant workers leave Bengaluru

BENGALURU: Two days after the success of the Janata Curfew on March 22, as police tightened their grip on people’s movements, chief minister BS Yediyurappa took some pity, and gave a one-time relaxation for people to leave Bengaluru for their native places.

March 25 was the festival day of Ugadi, which marks the new year in most parts of Karnataka. It was a scene of chaos at major highways on the evening of March 24 as people took whatever transport was available to leave the city. Many of them were migrant workers as the tech capital gets a large number of them from the backward North Karnataka region. Since a statewide lockdown was anyway announced for the entire month, people fled in thousands.

Many migrants, especially from North Karnataka and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, used the opportunity to head out of Bengaluru. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the nationwide lockdown would take effect at midnight, some more left making use of the four-hour window. Faced with criticism, the chief minister ordered strict enforcement of the ban from the next day onwards.


That brief relaxation in movement restrictions at Bengaluru’s border check-posts has kind of prevented the migrant workers’ problem other major cities are facing. There are still large numbers of migrant workers living in Bengaluru, but they are either living in temporary sheds near buildings under construction or in the few labour camps the government has been running in places such as Munekolala, Marthahalli, and Whitefield. The labourers staying here are facing shortage of food, but the problem may ease a little bit with many nonprofits including Akshaya Patra Foundation stepping in.