Mumbai, May 25 (IANS): Maharashtra Navnirman Sena President Raj Thackeray on Monday demanded that in future, the state government must permit entry only to bonafide migrants from other states.

He said that henceforth, when migrants enter the state, they must be registered, and their full personal details and identification papers should be submitted to the police.

"Only if these requirements are met with diligently, will they (migrants) be allowed to enter Maharashtra. A strict adherence to needs to be followed," Thackeray said.

His comments came in response to a reported statement by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath that if services of people from his state are required, then the prior permission of the Uttar Pradesh government would be mandatory.

"If such is the case, then any migrant entering Maharashtra too, would need to take permissions from us, the Maharashtra government and the state police. The Maharashtra government needs to look into this matter seriously," urged Thackeray.

It may be recalled that the then two-year old MNS shot into the limelight in 2008 by a series of agitations targeting migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states for several months, leading to a massive social-political furore, and subsequently court cases lodged against Thackeray and others.

Around 14 years later, the party's first major political issueAhas been willy-nilly hijacked by an invisible force - the Coronavirus - which succeeded in driving away more migrants from the state than the MNS could ever hope to achieve.

According to rough estimates, over a million migrants have left Maharashtra in the past over two months by autorickshaws, taxis, buses, trains and many by walking, with the largest numbers from the prosperous industrial-commercial belt of Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions.