Stranded Odias from Mum, Ghy & Imphal flown back home

Bhubaneswar: Three special flights by Air Asia brought back loads of stranded Odia migrants from Mumbai, Imphal and Guwahati on Wednesday.

The Odisha government facilitated the return of the migrants from Imphal and Guwahati, while the flight from Mumbai was sponsored by a group of parents of schoolchildren.

The Mumbai-Bhubaneswar flight arrived here at 8.25am with 180 passengers, while the second flight from Imphal, which mostly carried plumbers and construction workers, arrived at 2.40pm with 124 passengers.

The Bhubaneswar-Guwahati flight will arrive at 11.30pm. The migrant workers were taken to their respective districts on separate buses from the airport. Officials of the state government and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) have been deployed at the airport for stamping and registering each returnee.

The government has decided that the people stranded in the remote areas, where train services are not available and travelling by road is not feasible, would be flown by back, a government communication said.

Officials said the migrants were stranded in Tinsukia, Silchar, Dimapur, Kamarup and Siva Sagar districts of Assam and some in Meghalaya. There were also migrants working in Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland.