According to NDTV report, the Uttar Pradesh government collected Rs 21 lakh from thousands of cycles confiscated from laborers going towards their homes in lockdown. Saharanpur district auctioned 5400 such confiscated cycles of laborers, which the laborers could not come to collect. Why did the administration have to auction the bicycles of thousands of laborers?
Actually, thousands of bicycles seized from laborers in Covid lockdown were lying in a deserted ground in Saharanpur in the form of junk today. A token number written on the cushions of these cycles was given to those laborers. However, the laborers who returned from hundreds of kilometers away might to their homes during lockdown, may have had neither the courage nor the money left to come to collect the junked bicycles after spending the rent. Therefore, after waiting for two years, the administration auctioned more than 5000 cycles of laborers for Rs 21 lakh.
During the lockdown, a large number of laborers started migrating from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal by bicycle. In such a situation, Saharanpur became the hub of the migrating laborers. The boundaries of three states meet in Saharanpur. For this reason, the administration brought here the workers migrating from Punjab, Haryana and Himachal.
Two years ago, the administration was stopping the migrating workers. During this, their bicycle were confiscated and they were quarantined. Then they were sent by bus and train. But their cycles remained there.
Saharanpur District Magistrate Akhilesh Singh said that the contact numbers of all the laborers were taken by the office bearers of Radha Swami Satsang Bhawan located on Ambala Road, where they were kept after returning to the state. Those laborers who did not reach out to get their cycles were called. Some laborers refused to take their cycles due to the great distance from Saharanpur. The Saharanpur administration has then auctioned them after declaring them as unclaimed. The amount received from the cycle auction has been sent to the government.
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