New Delhi: After months of inaction and deciding to leave the matter to the government, the Supreme Court on Tuesday to note of the migrant workers’ crisis during the ongoing COVID-19-induced lockdown.

The move came more than two months since a countrywide lockdown was announced, that resulted in migrants having to travel out of the cities where they worked in (mostly as daily wage earners) and towards their native villages and towns, on foot.

On May 15, the Supreme Court had refused to entertain a plea by lawyer Alakh Alok Srivastava, seeking a direction to the Centre to ask all district magistrates to identify stranded migrant workers and provide shelter and food to them before ensuring their free transportation home in view of the incident at Aurangabad in which 16 workers were mowed down by a goods train.