Under Vande Bharat mission 1672 expatriates will reach Kochi in Kerala today from Gulf countries, Moscow, Egypt and Maldova.
A Special flight carrying 162 passengers from Maldives is also scheduled to arrive in Thiruvananthapuram today.
A batch of 166 Indian nationals left Dhaka for Delhi and Ahmedabad on an Air India evacuation flight today around noon. The flight carried 120 passengers to Delhi and 46 passengers to Ahmedabad.
This was the second flight from Bangladesh in the third phase of Vande Bharat Mission to evacuate Indians stranded in foreign countries due to the disruption of international travel in the wake of Coronavirus pandemic. Flight on Monday had carried 167 Indian nationals to Delhi.
With the latest flight till now, more than 2130 people have been evacuated by flight from Dhaka under the Vande Bharat Mission.
Apart from the evacuation by flight, around 230 Indians have also been evacuated from Bangladesh through the land routes to Tripura, Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya on 28th May.
A few other chartered flights have also been facilitated by the Indian High Commission in Dhaka to evacuate Indian citizens stranded in Bangladesh.
The evacuation of Indian citizens from Bangladesh started on 8th May with the first flight leaving for Srinagar carrying 168 medical students. Till now 4 flights have left for Srinagar, 3 for Kolkata, 3 for Delhi and one each for Chennai, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
Meanwhile, a total of 168 Indian nationals are returning from Maldives today through Air India flight destined to Trivandrum and Bengaluru. Passengers had started gathering at Male airport since morning and thanked Indian government for Vande bharat mission for evacuation of Indian nationals.
Another two flights are scheduled in the next two days for Delhi, Kolkata and Bhubaneswar. The repatriation is being carried out in coordination with the Indian High Commission in Male. With this evacuation, over three and half thousand people have been brought back from Maldives since the mission began. Indian navy ship INS Jalashwa has ferried thrice while INS Magar made a maiden voyage carrying over two thousand people as part of Samudra setu program. Two Air India flights were arranged last month to Delhi and Bengaluru.
The Indian high commission is also helping in arranging chartered flights for companies and individual groups. Maldives has over twenty thousand Indian nationals and over five thousand have registered to return in wake of the COVID crisis.
