Ahmedabad (Gujarat): Claiming that they have received no help so far from the Gujarat government, around 500 fishermen from Andhra Pradesh, who are stranded in the western Indian state, have appealed to the Prime Minister the Chief Justice of India to come to their aid.
The fishermen, who have been stranded on the shore of the Arabian Sea at Veraval in Gujarat's Somnath district for more than 20 days now, wrote a letter to PM Modi and CJI Bobde, asking them to arrange 7-8 jetty boats and 2-3 cargo ships to ferry them back to Visakhapatnam.
The fishermen, who belong to Srikakulam, Vijayanagaram, and Visakhapatnam districts of Andhra Pradesh, also sought quarantine facilities to all the migrants and fishermen at shelters as an interim measure and provide them with food, water and medical facilities.
They claimed in their letter that the Gujarat government has not provided them with any kind of help which they were supposed to as per the Home Ministry's March 29 order wherein it was stated that state governments have to provide temporary shelters, food, water, health facilities, etc to the needy, including migrants.
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Only a team from Srikakulam, AP, visited them and provided 5 kg rice, one soap, one blanket, mask, half kg of onions, dal and potato, added the letter.
"We are staying in small fishing boats under the hot sun and no water, electricity is available," added the letter.
Stating that around 3500 fishermen from Maharashtra were taken back by their government via sea route recently the fishermen also requested to be sent back to their state the same way.
The letter was also addressed to the Chairman of the National Legal Services Authority, Home Minister Amit Shah, Chief Justice of Gujarat High Court and the Chief Ministers of the Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat governments.
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