The issue of exodus of migrant workers has reached the Supreme Court. A PIL has been filed in the apex court seeking direction to the local administration/police authorities across India to immediately identify stranded migrant workers. It also asks to shift them to the nearest government shelter homes with proper food, water, medicines and under medical supervision, until the lockdown continues.

Advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, the petitioner in the case, has urged the Centre to immediately act to help thousands of migrant workers families—women, children, elders and differently-abled persons—walking on foot for hundreds of kilometers, from cities to their villages: without food, water, transport, medicine or shelter, amid coronavirus crisis. The apex court is likely to take up this matter on March 30.