Vande Bharat Mission: India launches the world’s largest repatriation exercise to bring back the stranded people
- India has formally launched the world’s largest repatriation programme ‘Vande Bharat Mission’.
- Under this mission, the government will look into bringing back Indian nationals and those NRIs who want to return to their respective countries where they have family, jobs, etc.
SOPs for the MOVEMENT OF INDIAN NATIONALS
- The Ministry of Home Affairs has come out with ‘Standard Operating Protocols (SOPs)’ for the movement of Indian nationals to and from India.
- Following will be allowed:
- Students whose colleges or universities and schools shut down because of the situation.
- People who are employed and then either lost their jobs, finished their visas, completed their terms and had to come back.
- Cases which are linked to health, elderly people, pregnant women, family emergencies, sympathetic cases.
- Only those with compelling reasons will be allowed to return.
- As of now no OCI (Overseas Citizens of India) cardholder would be included in the repatriation process. Although, in the flights that would be taking off from India, those NRIs who stand to lose their jobs, visas and have families abroad will be allowed to travel to the countries that the flights would be going to.
- Indian Nationals, holding six months visas would also be allowed to travel, depending on of course, if the country concerned agrees to accept them.
COST OF TRAVEL
- MoCA (Ministry of Civil Aviation)/DMA (Department of Military Affairs) has specified that the cost of travel, will be borne by such travellers.
- All travel is based on lists being made by Indian missions.
- Travellers will have to pay for their journey.
- Airfares have been fixed after the MEA negotiated flat rates as airfares for each country.
- However, in case of the ships deployed by the Indian Navy, a nominal fee will be charged. As most of them who would travel by ships would be blue-collared workers from the Gulf countries and the Maldives.
IMPORTANT HIGHLIGHTS
- The Ministry of External Affairs is also focused on rehabilitation of those Indian nationals who have been rendered unemployed.
- It would be sharing database of those skilled workers who would be returning jobless with state governments and the Ministry of Skill Development, to ensure that they are rehabilitated once they complete their quarantine period.
- All passengers and crew members would have to go through rigorous medical screening as precautionary measures.
- The crew will be in complete PPE (personal protection equipment) and meals will be provided before the flight so that there is no sanitation-related issue.
- All passengers will also be provided with PPE so that they are also “protected” during the flight.
FLIGHTS INVOLVED
- Air India flights will start ferrying out passengers stranded in India.
- Air India subsidiary, Air India Express, will also operate flights, mainly to the Middle-East.
- The first Air India flight took off from Delhi at 11.15 pm, on May 7, to Singapore.
- On May 8, flights will leave for Dhaka, London, Riyadh and San Francisco. These will be operated from Mumbai and Delhi.
- Air India Express has a seven-day plan. Its first flights will take off on the Cochin-Abu Dhabi-Cochin and Kozhikode-Dubai-Kozhikode routes.
STATIC INFO
- Union External Affairs Minister-Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
- Union Home Minister-Amit Shah
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