India evacuation: First flight takes off from Kerala, INS Jalashwa at Male port

New Delhi, May 07: India has launched a massive evacuation operation to bring back Indians stranded in different parts of the world. The first flight has taken off from Kerala, while the INS Jalashwa has entered the Male port.

Air India will operate special flights from New Delhi, Cochin and Kozhikode to Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively.

The flights under the Vande Bharat Mission starts today. 2,300 passengers will be brought back today, a statement by the Press Information Bureau said. The highest number of passengers-300 will be coming back from the United States. 250 each from UK, Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines are being brought back, while 200 each from Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh, Doha and Dhaka are also being brought back.

PIB said in a tweet said that in all 14,800 stranded passengers will be brought back. Air India is following the standard operating procedures which were released on Tuesday.