Hyderabad, May 8 (IANS): At a time when migrant workers from various parts of the country are returning to their home states due to ongoing nation-wide lockdown, a train with about 250 migrants from Bihar reached Telangana on Friday.

Sharmik Special carrying the workers who were working in rice mills of Telangana reached Lingampalli station on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

According to East Central Railway (ECR), the train departed from Khagaria in Bihar at 3.45 a.m. on Thursday. ECR officials said the train was operated at the request of the state government.

They made the clarification after Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Kumar Jha tweeted to the railway minister, wanting to know under whose order the train was being run.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao had said on May 5 that the trains carrying migrant workers to Bihar will come back with 20,000 to 25,000 workers from Bihar who were working in rice mills in Telangana.

Last month, Rao had urged the Bihar government to send back the workers to Telangana. More than 90 Aper cent of the workers in rice mills were Bihari migrants. "These workers, who load and unload the rice trucks, had gone to Bihar for Holi and are stranded there due toAthe lockdown," the chief minister had said.

Rao had even stated that if necessary he would talk to the Centre to arrange a few special trains to bring back the Bihari migrant workers.

The chief minister said as Telangana was procuring record 1.05 crore tonnes of paddy from farmers at designated procurement centres in villages in view of the lockdown, the task can't be completed without the labourers Bihar, who load and unload the trucks.