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Our Lives Matter Only When We Work: Migrant Tells Rahul in Video

Gandhi met them when they stopped to rest after walking more than 100 km.

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Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi released a video in which he can be seen interacting with a group of migrant workers walking back to their native village in Uttar Pradesh from Haryana, amid the nationwide coronavirus lockdown.

“Coronavirus has given pain to a lot of people, but has hit the migrants the most....The hungry migrants have been threatened, beaten, but they have continued to walk towards their homes,” he said in the beginning of the video.

The interaction took place on 16 May near Sukhdev Vihar flyover in New Delhi. The migrant workers were on their way from Ambala in Haryana to Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, a distance of about 600 km.

Gandhi met them when they stopped to rest after walking more than 100 km. In the 17-minute video, Gandhi is seen sitting on a footpath with the migrants and interacting with them.

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For almost an hour, he listened to their story and hardships, the discrimination they faced, their reasons for deciding to flee their workplace, and why they were forced to walk back to their homes, their fears and aspirations, the party had said.

He talked to them about where they live, if they have money and how they are managing their food.

The migrants can bee seen telling Gandhi that they don't plan to come back for a long time when they reach their homes. They added that they felt their lives were in danger in the areas they lived, alleging that police have been attacking the migrants.

“Our lives matter as long as we are working, once the work stops, our lives are not valued,” a migrant worker told Gandhi. The migrants stated that not giving them a few days time period before announcing the lockdown was wrong.

Soon after the interaction on 16 May, the party had alleged that Delhi Police had detained the workers.

The police, however, refuted the claim. “We have not detained any migrant. Rahul Gandhi came and interacted with the migrants. Later, his supporters took the migrants in their vehicles,” said deputy commissioner of police (southeast Delhi) RP Meena.

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Topics:  Congress   Rahul Gandhi   Coronavirus 2020 

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