Over 900 stranded Indians, including medical students, were brought back home in five Air India flights from Singapore, Bangladesh, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and some West Asian nations on Friday under the Vande Bharat Mission. Several more are expected to arrive late on Friday and Saturday morning.
According to Ministry of Civil Aviation, the first flight from Singapore landed at the Delhi airport around 11.45 am with 234 passengers. Within a couple of hours, the second special flight with 167 students arrived at the Srinagar airport from Dhaka. The third flight with 177 passengers from Manama, Bahrain landed in Kochi. The fourth flight with 153 passengers, from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, landed in Kerala’s Kozhikode at around 8.10 pm.
Another flight with around 200 Indians from Sharjah is expected to arrive in Lucknow on Saturday.
After the returnees reached IGI airport, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said all arrangements have been made for the Indians coming from other countries.
“The Delhi Govt has made all arrangements for the Indians arriving from abroad,” Kejriwal tweeted.
All the arriving passengers were put through screening and triaging to find out any infection of coronavirus. After immigration and customs formalities, they headed towards paid quarantine facilities where they will spend 14 days, before going home.
Nearly 20 buses, including of DTC and neighbouring States of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, were deployed at IGI airport for carrying people to quarantine facilities.
Srinagar Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Chaudhary also expressed his gratitude to the Indian High Commission in Dhaka for the “tremendous efforts” in getting these students home. “Profound gratitude to Indian High Commission @ihcdhaka for tremendous efforts. More to follow. For convenience of students -- bulk tickets next,” Chaudhary said in a tweet.
Sources said 27 flights will take off from the Gulf region next week with 11 from UAE (including the two that have already landed), five from Saudi Arabia, five from Kuwait, two from Bahrain, two from Qatar and two from Oman.
From the neighbourhood, seven flights will take off from Bangladesh (including the one that has already landed) carrying passengers bound for Srinagar, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.
Similarly, sources said 14 flights are scheduled to bring Indians from South-East Asia, with five flights each from Singapore (including the one that has already landed) and the Philippines and four from Malaysia.
Seven flights have been allotted for evacuation of Indians from four airports in the US -- New York, Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco. Another seven flights have been assigned for passengers in London in the UK.
Sources said Indian nationals are expected to land at 14 airports across India in ten flights arriving in Delhi, nine in Hyderabad, nine in Kochi, four in Kozhikode, one in Trivandrum, one in Kannur, nine in Chennai, one in Trichy, five in Ahmadabad, four in Mumbai, three in Srinagar, four in Bengaluru, one in Lucknow and one in Amritsar.
Sources said, 67,833 requests for repatriation have been registered. These include, requests from 34 per cent of all 22,470 students, 30 per cent of all 15,815 migrant workers, 9,250 short-term visa holders faced with expiry of visas, 5,531 with medical emergency or seeking treatment for terminal illness, 4,147 tourists stranded abroad, 3,041 pregnant women and the elderly and 1,112 of those required to return due to death of a family member.
The largest number of requests came from Indian nationals of Kerala with 25,246 applications, followed by Tamil Nadu (6,617), Maharashtra (4,341), Uttar Pradesh (3,715), Rajasthan (3,320), Telangana (2,796), Karnataka (2,786), Andhra Pradesh (2,445), Gujarat (2,330) and Delhi (2,232).