Bengaluru, May 22: Evacuation planes from Male in Maldives and Doha in Qatar landed in Bengaluru with returnees from Karnataka after they were stranded for two months due to suspension of international flights since March 23 and the extended lockdown, an official said on Friday.
"An Air-India flight (#0266) with 152 passengers from Male and its subsidiary Express flight (IX-0822) with 177 returnees and 5 infants from Doha landed here safely at 6.50 pm. and 9.05 pm respectively," an airline official told media persons in Bengaluru.
Both the flights are first from their respective countries to Bengaluru, bringing in returnees to the southern state in the second phase of the Vande Bharat mission, being carried out to evacuate Indians stranded the world over.
"As per the standard operating procedure and guidelines of the state health department, all the passengers were screened with thermal device and tested to ensure they were asymptomatic before leaving the airport," a nodal officer said.
The returnees were given a spare mask to wear all the time and a sanitiser to wash their hands.
"The luggage of all passengers was screened and disinfected before handing over to them after they completed formalities such as filling the self-declaration form and downloading of the Quarantine App for contact tracing later,” said the official.
The passengers were ferried from the airport in state-run buses in batches for 14-day institutional quarantine in hotels and resorts across the city.
The flights were the 6th and 7th flights to Karnataka, of the national carrier and its Express arm, which are operating the service to repatriate thousands of Indians, including distressed workers, migrants, students, senior citizens and tourists, stranded overseas.
Five flights have flown about 650 returnees till date from May 18-21 under the mission's second phase to Bengaluru and Mangaluru on the west coast. The passengers have been brought from Dubai in the UAE, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Muscat in Oman, Dammam in Saudi Arabia and San Francisco in the US.
The remaining flights to Karnataka will land in Bengaluru and Mangaluru over the next 12 days till June 3 from 9-10 more destinations the world over.
In the first phase of the mission from May 7-17, the airline and its arm flew 6 flights to the state from May 11-15, bringing in 800 passengers, including 623 to Bengaluru and 177 to Mangaluru from London, Singapore, San Francisco and Dubai.
Comments
Muslim organisations felicitate State BJP Chief Nalin Kumar
I want to know from them wat was the need for this. Has this helped the ordinary Mangalore Muslims in anyway. I would not have asked abt this if the program was conducted in your house. But here it is done in the name of Muslims. We need to stop being intellectually dishonest
Young energetic Muslim brothers present in Dk ,please note we need young leaders to lead us . Wake up ... and take over .
We respect ur decision sir.
But there are a lot of questions about it on people's mind.
We need to be updated about ur next plan of action.
Are u planning to approach the court for gaining the permission from the police, bcoz otherwise I don't think we will get the permission
Secondly, a few days back I wanted to contact Muslim central committee office to confirm if the protest Wil be there. I googled for the no, but the no. did not exist. Does that mean the Muslim central committee does not have an office or telephone no????
This only shows how organised we are.
Requesting Muslim central committee to get their house in order. Get more professional. Also consult people to utilise various platform to responsibly collect funds from so many ordinary bearys who want to donate money, but don't know whom to send it to.
We need an action committee to handle such situations. It must consist a battery of lawyers to fight the cases filed by the police.
If our leaders are old, they need to groom new leaders into the committee.
Moreover, it is important to question these so called leaders about their fecilitation program conducted for making kateel wen he won the election. Wat was the purpose of such fecilitation. Becoz I don't think he gives a damn when our community suffered. I question, whether all this is done in our name only to gain your contact and flourish ur business???
Never ever dare to do so in the name of Muslims
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