During the evacuation of 42 Keralite nurses from strife-torn Iraq in 2014, the-then chief minister Oommen Chandy had to make an important decision, and that too very fast.
“We had just returned to the Kerala House after a meeting with then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to discuss the rescue of Keralite nurses stranded in Iraq. No sooner did we reach Kerala House, a phone call came asking us to rush back to the South Block (which houses the External Affairs Ministry),” said Joji George Jacob, who was accompanying Chandy during his trip to Delhi in 2011–2016.
Other than Sushma, the other members of the closed-door meeting were the directors of RAW and intelligence and the foreign secretary, said Joji, who was Chandy’s private secretary (nodal officer, Mass Contact Programme).
Chandy was told about the information that the ISIS terrorists had conveyed—to blast the building where the nurses were staying. And the choice for the nurses was to board a waiting bus with the terrorists and go to some unknown location. A decision had to be made.
Sushma told Chandy that whatever his decision, she and the Union government would stand with him. “That was the moment I witnessed the dilemma of an administrator. He looked out of the window for a minute,” said Joji. “Let them go with the terrorists. That would give us some more time to find a way out,” Chandy told Sushma.
Joji said Chandy camped in Delhi for three days, though they had gone there to attend one meeting with the external affairs minister. “The programmes of the CM were getting cancelled or postponed back home. I was getting calls from Kerala asking when he was returning,” said Joji.
When he asked Chandy about his plans to return to Kerala, his response was: “When the Indian flight to bring the nurses back to the homeland from Iraq lands there.” True to his word, Chandy returned when the special flight landed in the conflict zone to bring back the 46 Indian nurses stranded there.