363 Andhra students reach home from war-hit Ukraine: Task Force chief
VIJAYAWADA: As many as 363 students from Andhra Pradesh, studying medicine and other courses at different universities in Ukraine, have returned to their respective hometowns safely, said MT Krishna Babu, senior IAS officer heading the Task Force constituted to oversee the arrangements for bringing back the stranded students from the war-hit country.
Addressing mediapersons, Krishna Babu said quoting database compiled from different sources that they have identified 770 students from Andhra Pradesh and another 100 to 150 students could be still there in the east European country.
According to the data from the Ministry of External Affairs and Telugu associations in European countries, 378 students from Andhra Pradesh have been identified in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. Of them, 150 have returned home and most of the remaining were reportedly heading towards borders. All of them were likely to reach the border in the next couple of days.
Krishna Babu said the Government of India has now been operating more flights to evacuate Indians from Ukraine since March 3 and on average, 16 to 17 flights were being operated daily and the majority of Indians were expected to be evacuated by March 9.
He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that the evacuation process would continue till the last Indian student was evacuated from the war-hit country.
“As of date, there are around 2,000 Indians who have crossed the Hungarian border and another 2,000 would soon cross the border. The same was the situation at Ukraine’s borders with other neighbouring countries,” he said.
“Those who reached the border earlier were provided accommodation and those who reaching thereafter were airlifted due to limited accommodation. This has caused a delay in airlifting those who had reached earlier. In coming days, all would be airlifted,” the Task Force chief added. Around 1,100 of the 2,000 Indians, who had crossed over to Hungary would be airlifted on Saturday night.