One year of Vande Bharat Mission: Here’s what happened to stranded Indian expats repatriated from UAE amid COVID-19

  • Date: 08-May-2021
  • Source: Gulf News
  • Sector:Healthcare
  • Country:UAE
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One year of Vande Bharat Mission: Here’s what happened to stranded Indian expats repatriated from UAE amid COVID-19

Dubai: Friday, May 7, 2021 was a gloomy day for the family of Ramachandran. K, who lives in Kozhikode district of the southern Indian state of Kerala. The sky was overcast and there was a pall of gloom hanging over the family on the day that marked a year after Ramachandran's his daughter-in-law Athira Geetha Sreedharan reached home from the UAE on the first day of India's COVID-19 repatriation drive — Vande Bharat Mission (VBM). Dubbed as the largest repatriation drive, VBM saw millions of stranded Indians across the world flying home due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also saw the crash of an Air India Express repatriation flight from Dubai to Kozhikode (IX1344), that claimed the lives of 21, people including two pilots, three months after the repatriation mission began. In this past year, VBM facilitated the journey of more than 8. 3 million people during the time of crisis, according to India's Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri. As of January 21, as many as 1. 3 million passengers had travelled from the UAE to India, India's Minister of State for External Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs V. Muraleedharan had said. During his visit to the