Bengal Chief Minister on Wednesday reposed faith in the Ministry of External Affairs about its deaings with the Afghanistan crisis urging upon the Central Government to safely evacuate the Indian nationals including those from Bengal stranded in the strife-torn nation.
When asked to comment on what she thought about the Afghan crisis and what her opinion was about the Centre’s dealing with it she said “it is a complex international isue and need not be comment on … the Ministry of External Affairs is taking care of the situation … they have evacuated some Indians and I will urge them evacuate all the Indians stranded in that country including those from our State.”
The State would be writing a letter to the Centre in this regard, she said. Banerjee said a little more than a couple of hundred people from Bengal were currently stranded in Afghanistan.
“So far we have been able to trace more than 200 people who are stranded in different parts of Afghanistan. Some are stranded in Kabul and some are in the other parts of the country. The Chief Secretary is writing a letter to the MEA requesting it to bring back the citizens as quickly as possible, she told the media adding most of those who were stuck up in that country are from Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Terai region. “We are trying to find out whether there are more people,” she said.
However, sources in the Home Department said more people from Bengal could be stranded in that State. “We have got some unconfirmed inputs from other districts like Nadia and elsewhere who are still in that country … we are trying to confirm this,” an official said adding “as we have to gather information in short span of time we could not gather the entire information.”
The District Magistrates had been asked to “inform the top echelons of the administration directly if anyone comes and informs them that their relatives are stuck” in Afghanistan the official said adding “the names, addresses, their whereabouts in Afghanistan and phone numbers and other details have also been asked for… as soon as we collect these information we will immediately pass it on to Delhi.”
Apart from the Afghanistan issue the Chief Minister also dwelt on a host of other things saying she had requested the Prime Minister to send more vaccines to Bengal. “The Prime Minister is telling that his Government has vaccinated 50 crore people but here in Bengal we have got only 3 crore vaccines … w ereas we require 14 crore doses.”
On the resuming of the local train services she said “only after 75 percent of Kolkatans and 80 percent of the people living in Howrah have been vaccinated we will start vaccinating the villagers and after 50 percent of them have been vaccinated we will start the local train service.”
The Chief Minister said that she was sending a team of ministers and MPs to the Niti Ayog in Delhi to get clearance for three “master plans” for Sunderbans, coastal tourist town Digha and Ghatal in order to save them from recurrent floods in the face of changing global climate.