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India will expand its mega mission to evacuate stranded Indians from abroad starting next week by including countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Germany, Spain and Thailand, official sources said on Friday.
As with Friday night, a total of 67,833 Indians eligible according to government criteria of having “compelling reasons” to be brought back home, have registered for flight evacuation under the “Vande Bharat Mission”, the sources said.
They said that the stranded Indians in Central Asia, as well as in several European countries, will be brought back home in the second phase of evacuation starting May 15.
About 4,500 Indians out of about 27,000 in the Maldives have expressed a desire to travel back home, the sources said, adding that between 1,800 and 2,000 Indians will be evacuated in four trips by two ships: INS Jalshwa and INS Magar.
The Indian Navy ship INS Jalashwa left Kochi on Friday afternoon with approximately 700 returnees on board. According to the government’s evacuation policy, Indians with “compelling reasons” to return, such as pregnant women, the elderly, students, and people facing the possibility of deportation, are taken back home.
A total of 64 flights with approximately 15,000 returnees from 12 countries are expected to land at 14 airports in India from May 7 to 15 as part of phase one of the mission, the sources said.
The 67,833 people who have registered and mapped flights, including 22,470 students, 15,815 migrant workers, 9,250 people facing visa expiration and 5,531 seeking evacuation for medical emergency reasons, sources said.
People registered for the evacuation also included 4,147 stranded tourists, 3,041 pregnant women and the elderly, and 1,112 Indians who want to return due to the death of family members.
Kerala tops the list of repatriation requests at the state level with 25,246, followed by 6,617 from Tamil Nadu and 4,341 from Maharashtra. A total of 3,715 people from Uttar Pradesh requested the evacuation, 3,320 from Rajasthan, 2,796 from Telangana and 2,786 from Karnataka, the sources said.
The Ministry of External Affairs has developed an online platform where applications received by Indian missions from Indian citizens who wish to return are uploaded regularly. In the first phase of the evacuation, a total number of 27 flights will bring back the Indians from the Gulf region. This included 11 flights from the United Arab Emirates, five from Saudi Arabia, five from Kuwait and two from Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, the sources said.
From the neighborhood, seven flights are scheduled to bring Bangladesh Indians to carry passengers to Srinagar, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.
Similarly, 14 flights will evacuate stranded Indians from Southeast Asia. Of these flights, five are from Singapore and the Philippines and four from Malaysia, they said.
In the first phase of the mission, seven flights will take off from four airports in the United States: New York, Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco. Another seven flights will bring the Indians to London. Evacuation flights are expected to land at 14 airports in India, including Delhi (10 flights), Hyderabad and Kochi nine each, Kozhikode four, Trivandrum (one), Kannur (one), Chennai (nine), Trichy (one ), Ahmadabad (five), Mumbai (four), Srinagar (three), Bengaluru (four), Lucknow (one) and Amritsar (one), the sources said.
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