Vande Bharat Mission: 10,000 reach Bihar

GAYA: With the arrival of 466 natives of Bihar and Jharkhand by three special flights on Thursday, the number of foreign returnees by special flights under the ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ crossed 10,000 mark.
According to Gaya airport director Dilip Kumar, altogether 10,041 foreign returnees have flown back under the ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ and special repatriation flights were operated by foreign airlines.The process began on May 18 with the arrival of 41 returnees, including 13 belonging to Jharkhand, who were stranded in UK following the lockdown.
Since then, altogether 66 flights have landed at the Gaya airport till Tuesday. Of these 39 are of Air India, IndiGo and SpiceJet. The remaining 27 are foreign airlines like Fly Dubai, Jazeera Airways, Kuwait Airlines, Etehad, Qatar Airways, Air Arabia, Salam Airways, Thai Air Asia, Thai Smile, Myanmar National Airways and Myanmar Airways International among others.
As per the break up released by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the maximum number of foreign returnees are from UAE followed by Kuwait.
From the UAE too, the maximum returnees are from Dubai, followed Abu Dhabi, Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah. Whereas Dubai accounted for 2,269 returnees, the number of returnees from Kuwait has been put at 2,774. Sources said that the vast majority of returnees from the Middle East comprises low paid workers who have lost their jobs on account of the pandemic.
Gaya airport director Dilip said, “Besides returnees from the Middle East, 849 persons have been evacuated from Bangladesh, followed by 268 from Kyrgyzstan (former USSR), 234 from Russia, 130 from Ukraine, 70 from Sri Lanka and 45 from Myanmar.”
Though the number of people stranded who got themselves registered under the ‘Vande Bharat Mission’, has not been officially released, sources put the number of people from Bihar and Jharkhand registered under VBM at more than 25,000.
Gaya DM Abhishek Singh said the returnees are mandated to remain under institutional quarantine for seven days followed by an equal number of days under home quarantine. Bihar origin returnees are quarantined in Bodh Gaya, while those from Jharkhand are sent to Ranchi for institutional quarantine. “Altogether 117 of the returnees hail from Gaya district,” the DM said.