Phase 3 of Indian expatriates’ repatriation begins

ROSHIN GEORGE

DUBAI

The Indian Embassy in UAE has said that two special flights under the Vande Bharat Mission took 362 Indians from Abu Dhabi to Trivandrum and Mumbai on June 11.

“2 special flights from Abu Dhabi to Trivandrum & Mumbai carried 362 passengers today under the Vande Bharat Mission,” the embassy tweeted. This is part of the third phase of the exercise to take home stranded Indians and will run from June 11 to June 30.

The Indian consulate in Dubai posted on Twitter that it repatriated 153 Indians including pregnant women and senior citizens from Dubai to Srinagar on a June 11 Air India flight.

Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted that the “number of flights from Gulf under phase 3 of Vande Bharat Mission now increased from originally planned 107 to 165.”

A total of 1,65,375 people have returned, including 29,034 migrant workers under the Vande Bharat Mission, said Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava. The mission began on May 7 and its second phase started on May 16.

Apart from various welfare organizations operating in the UAE which have been organising chartered flights for stranded expats, a few Indian businessmen have also arranged chartered flights for the repatriation of their employees. The most recent was R. Harikumar of Elite Group of Companies who has arranged free tickets on a June 15 Air Arabia Sharjah-Kochi flight for 125 of his staff.