As the national lockdown entered its fifth week, an unprecedented cross-country evacuation exercise to bring back migrant workers and other people stranded in different states appeared to gather momentum on Saturday with Punjab sending 80 buses to ferry back Sikh pilgrims stuck in Maharashtra and UP preparing to bring back at least 9,500 labourers from Haryana by Sunday.Around 100 Sikh pilgrims stranded at Takht Sri Hazur Sahib in Maharashtra's Nanded left for their home states of Punjab, Haryana and New Delhi after a push from Punjab CM Amarinder Singh and a nod from Union home minister Amit Shah . Chief secretary Ajoy Mehta asked his counterparts in UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh to take back 3.5 lakh migrants from these states stuck in Maharashtra. Mehta said Maharashtra was willing to ferry migrants to the borders of their states and hand them over.The Himachal Pradesh and Haryana governments, too, sent Kashmiri workers and those from UP back to their home states on buses on Saturday.A total of 3,800 pilgrims from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi who had come to Nanded on March 23, a day before the nationwide lockdown started, have been stuck there since. Even as the first batch of pilgrims departed, the Punjab government on Saturday dispatched 80 more buses that are expected to reach Nanded on Sunday to bring the rest back. Each of these buses will be covering 3,300km.In Gujarat, the first batch of 2,400 labourers from MP set off for their native state on 98 buses arranged by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.Chouhan said migrant workers stranded in Rajasthan had also started coming back.In UP, CM Yogi Adityanath set up a committee and directed officials to prepare a plan to create at least 15 lakh jobs to provide employment to migrant workers expected to return to the state over the next two months. A total of 2,224 workers returned from Haryana on Saturday on 82 buses and another 9,500-odd will be brought back till Sunday, officials said."The people who returned from Haryana belong to 16 districts. They have been taken to their respective district headquarters for institutional quarantine," additional chief secretary (home) Awanish Awasthi said.After 14 days, each person would be given a ration kit, Rs 1,000 and sent home where they will remain in home quarantine for another 14 days.Sources in Maharashtra said CM Uddhav Thackeray had taken up the challenge of repatriating migrant workers with the Centre as well as with the visiting central team. Over 1,500 migrants had gathered on April 15 at Bandra railway station after rumours circulated that long-distance trains had restarted.Thackeray had told his Punjab counterpart that he had no objection to the pilgrims’ return, but it would require the central government's permission in view of the nationwide lockdown. Singh then took up the matter with home minister Shah, who granted permission for transportation of the pilgrims as a special case."We have asked the pilgrims to follow social distancing norms in the buses. Accordingly, against the capacity of 52 passengers, only 35 will be allowed in each bus. We think that in order to send back 3,800 pilgrims, they may require more than 100 buses," the bureaucrat said.Before the pilgrims boarded the bus on Friday, a medical examination was conducted and they were allowed to go only after they had tested negative for the novel coronavirus . "After reaching their destination, we expect they would stay in quarantine for 14 days," the official said.