Mangaluru | Covid safety norms flouted during new Gurupura bridge inauguration

Dubai, May 6: The Indian nationals cleared by the UAE health authorities and found to be asymptomatic will only be allowed to fly back home in one of India's biggest ever repatriation exercises, the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi has said ahead of the first set of flights on Thursday.

On Monday, the Indian government announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7. Air India will operate 64 flights from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad amid the COVID-19-induced lockdown, India's Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Tuesday.

The first two special flights that will operate from Thursday to evacuate Indians stranded in the UAE due to the coronavirus pandemic will begin with applicants from Kerala, who formed the majority of the expatriates who have registered to be repatriated from here, Indian Ambassador to the UAE Pavan Kapoor has said.

"All departing passengers will have to undergo medical screening and IGM/IGG test at the departure airport and only those cleared by the UAE health authorities and found to be asymptomatic will be allowed to board the plane,” the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi said on Tuesday.

According to the embassy, all passengers will be required to sign an undertaking to undergo compulsory quarantine at the destination of arrival and bear the cost of the same.

“Each passenger, at the time of boarding would be handed over a safety kit containing 2 three-layered face masks, 2 pairs of gloves and pouches/small bottles of hand sanitizers. While on board the flight, the health protocol of the Ministry of Civil Aviation of India will be strictly followed,” said the embassy.

The passenger lists for the two flights on May 7 have been finalised by the Embassy / Consulate and sent to Air India Express for issue of tickets.

The Embassy / Consulate will continue conveying the details of further special flights as and when they are announced by the Government of India, over the next few days.

Less than 2,000 Indians wishing to return home from the UAE will be flown to six Indian states in the first week of India’s biggest ever repatriation exercise named Vande Bharat Mission—sans social distancing and COVID-19 tests, the Gulf News reported.

Only those cleared by the UAE health authorities and found to be asymptomatic will be allowed to board the plane.

The short-listed applicants, who were contacted by the Indian missions on Tuesday to purchase tickets for the first two flights to Kerala on Thursday, told the Gulf News that the tickets are priced around Dh 725 to Dh 750 (over Rs 15,000).

Sharjah resident Rasheed Thayyil said his 70-year-old mother Nepheeza Thottungal, who came on a visit to the UAE in February, received an email from the Indian Consulate in Dubai which quoted an airfare of around Dh725 (approx Rs 15,000), the report said.

Another applicant from Abu Dhabi Ambily Babu said she purchased a ticket at Dh 750 from Air India Express for her Abu Dhabi-Kochi flight scheduled to fly on Thursday evening, it said.

Air India Express which is set to operate the first two flights to Kerala on Thursday will operate its Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with a seating capacity of 186 economy class seats, the report added.

With nine seats reserved for isolation, only 177 passengers would be flown, it said.

The Indian expatriate community of approximately 3.42 million is reportedly the largest ethnic community in the UAE constituting roughly about 30 per cent of the country's population, according to information available on the Indian Embassy website.

Bengaluru, Mar 18: Two more people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Karnataka, taking the tally of infected persons in the state to 13, Health Minister B Sriramulu said on Wednesday.

A 56-year-old man, a resident of Bengaluru had returned to India from the US on March 6 while the second person is a 25-yr-old woman with a travel history to Spain.

"2 more COVID-19 cases have been registered in Bengaluru today, taking the total infected cases to 13. 56-year-old male, resident of Bengaluru returned from the USA on 6th March. Another 25-yr-old female has returned from Spain," Sriramulu said in a post on his Twitter account.

A total of 147 positive cases of coronavirus have been reported in India so far, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Wednesday.

The Karnataka BJP, which faced action on Twitter earlier this month over incendiary tweets, this time has passed the blame of Sangh Parivar sponsored Delhi violence to the victims.

In an insensitive tweet on Friday, it dubbed the protests against the notorious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as "fake" and added that the violence that followed was "the most well-planned assault on the Idea of India," in an apparent attempt to portray the victims as villains.

The handle, notorious for tweets targeting Muslims, blamed the clashes that erupted in Delhi between people demonstrating for and against the CAA on "so called 'Peacefuls'" - a known right-wing slur for Muslims.

ZERO - Number of Indians who lost their Citizenship due to the #CAA.

40+ - Number of Indians who lost their lives due to the #CAARiots.

The fake protests against CAA and subsequent riots by the so called Peacefuls are the most well planned assault on the "Idea of India."

— BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) February 28, 2020

Many people on social media called out the tweet for misleading people and covering up the role of Delhi BJP leader Kapil Mishra's provocative speech for triggering the violence or the failure of the Delhi Police, which reports to the former BJP chief and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in controlling the riots.

Earlier this month, the Karnataka BJP had tweeted a video of Muslim women standing in queue to vote in the Delhi elections, showing their voter ID cards, with the snarky caption: "Keep the documents safe, you will need to show them again during NPR (National Population Register) exercise."

Soon after, the party unit's Twitter handle was blocked by the social media platform for 24 hours after many accused it of encouraging Islamophobia.

NPR has been widely criticised by opposition parties as a precursor to the government's planned NRC or National Register of Citizens which intends to make Indians prove their citizenship with documents that many poor or illiterate do not possess.

Many fear that combined with the already imposed CAA - which promises citizenship to only non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh - the NRC can be used to make millions of Muslims stateless.

The government has denied the allegation and said the CAA only intends to help those who have faced religious persecution. In recent weeks, it has gone back on its rhetoric on the NRC which was announced by Amit Shah in parliament as "it will certainly happen".

The CAA, which was cleared by parliament in December, has triggered deadly protests in the country which left at least 25 dead till Sunday. Since then, at least 42 more people have been killed as large-scale violence erupted in northeast Delhi and hundreds of homes and shops have been burned to the ground.