Vande Bharat Mission: Govt to bring more Indians from different countries

New Delhi : India will be expanding its Vande Bharat Mission to bring back stranded Indians from abroad by including countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Germany, Spain and Thailand from next week.

Various Indians stranded in Central Asia and in European countries will be brought back to India under the second phase of the "Vande Bharat Mission" beginning May 15.

From May 7 to May 15 around 64 flights with more than 15000 Indians from 12 countries will be brought back at 14 airports across India.

The operation, the biggest evacuation since the first Gulf War, will see Indians being brought back from the US and the UK, besides southeast Asia and the Gulf on passenger jets and naval ships.

This time, the evacuations will be charged with two-way fare of the flights ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 100,000 for US and Europe.

Sources said Indian Navy ship INS Jalashwa set sail on Friday afternoon from Male to Kochi with approximately 700 Indians on board.

The first round of evacuations would bring back around 2 lakh people by the middle of May and then by mid-June around 3.5-4 lakh will be flown back, the government has said.

Meanwhile, there is a strict guideline on taking the symptomatic patients to the hospital and others to the 14-day quarantine at government facility.

India has 56,342 cases of the novel coronavirus, rising by 3,390 over the previous day and showing no sign of abating, despite the lockdown which has battered the economy and left millions without work. At least 1,886 people have died.