After Sonu Sood, it’s Amitabh Bachhan who books 6 flights for stranded migrants

June 10: Salute Bollywood! Amid the COVID-19 crisis and subsequent lockdown, Bollywood celebrities have come forward to help the migrant workers reach their homes safely. .After Sonu Sood’s continuous efforts to help workers got back to their native places, megastar Amitabh Bachchan has also now reportedly arranged for six flights so that about 1000 workers could go back home to Uttar Pradesh. The flights will carry the migrants to their homes in Uttar Pradesh, which is also Big B’s home state. He hails from Allahabad.

The chartered flights will take off with close to 180 migrants each to Allahabad, Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Lucknow. Out of the six flights, four took off on Wednesday and the other two will leave on Thursday. Four flights took off from Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. The flights were “organised” on Bachchan’s directive by his close aide Rajesh Yadav, managing director of his home production company AB Corp Ltd. The first flight from Mumbai to Gorakhpur took off at 6.10 AM on Wednesday. After a small interval, the other flights also flew to different cities of Uttar Pradesh.

Sources close to Bachchan said he wanted to book a train for the migrants but the logistics did not work out. Yadav, on Bachchan’s behalf, had also recently flagged off 10 buses for 300 migrants to reach their villages in Lucknow, Allahabad, Bhadohi and other places in Uttar Pradesh. This was done in partnership with the dargahs in Mahim and the Haji Ali, a statement said.

Earlier in the week, actor Sonu Sood arranged a special flight to send 180 migrants of Silchar in Assam from Mumbai. Last month, he helped 177 workers stuck in Kerala to fly home to Odisha.

The lockdown, which began on 25 March, left lakhs of migrants stranded in different parts of the country. With no money and no work, many walked, cycled or hitchhiked their way to villages hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometres away.