Evacuation of Indians from China’s Wuhan complete
New Delhi/Beijing: India’s evacuation of its nationals who were stranded in China’s Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus epidemic, was completed on Sunday with around 650 people brought back in two phases.
The government also evacuated seven Maldivians along with 323 Indians from China, where the outbreak of 2019-nCoV has leftover 300 people dead and 14,000 infected. A day earlier, Air India Boeing 747 had brought back 324 Indians from the region.
In a tweet, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Sunday said that seven Maldivians were brought back along with Indian nationals because India cared for its neighborhood. He tweeted, “#NeighbourhoodFirst at work again” tagging Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, former President Mohamed Nasheed, and Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid.
One of the tenets of the Modi foreign policy doctrine has been ‘Neighbourhood First’. While the US and several other countries are evacuating their own citizens, Pakistan has decided to leave its nationals stranded in Wuhan. India has however decided to help its allies who are unable to evacuate their citizens in the region.
Indian Ambassador to China, Vikram Misri in a tweet said that his team mounted a non-stop, almost 96-hour-long operation to coordinate a complex airlift under challenging circumstances for the passengers, with local authorities in Hubei province. He thanked his team members especially Deepak Padmakumar and M Balakrishnan for showing “exemplary fortitude and a real spirit of public service by traveling to ground zero in Wuhan to coordinate airport arrangements.” Official sources said as of now the evacuation process is “complete” even as six Indians down with fever and other flu-like symptoms, could not board the second Air India flight on Sunday. (IANS)