Rescuing its nationals: When India says, ‘we won’t rest,’ we mean it

New Delhi, Mar 02: We will not rest till our fellow Indians are safe, said Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar as India continued with the evacuation of Indians from Ukraine.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been at the forefront and has held a series of meetings to ensure that the evacuation is flawless and every Indian comes back safely. He even ordered the IAF to be part of this mission.

On Monday the government also sent four Union Ministers to the bordering nations with Ukraine to speed up the evacuation of Indians stranded in Ukraine. India has undertaken many complex missions, thus suggesting how proactive the machinery has been.

The Vande Bharat Mission was launched to bring Indians stranded abroad due to the COVID-19 pandemic. India operated nearly 30,0000 flights as part of the mission which began on May 2020. Until August 2 2021, India evacuated 1.8 million Indians in an operation that operated in 15 phases. This is in fact the largest evacuation mission that India has ever carried out.

In April 2015, India launched Operation Raahat due to a conflict in Yemen between the Houthi rebels and the government. India evacuated 6,688 people that included, 4,741 Indians, and 1,947 foreign nationals from Britain, France, United States and Pakistan. This was a tough mission considering it was done amidst aerial bombing. "The bombings are still on. There was trouble in evacuating them, yet we did our task," General V K Singh, then minister of state for external affairs had said after the mission.

When Nepal was hit by a massive earthquake in April 2015, India launched Operation Maitri. The operation was launched hardly minutes after the earthquake struck Nepal. 5,000 Indians were rescued.

India also rescued nationals of the US, UK, Russia and Germany by mobilising the C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, Il-76, C-130J Hercules and Mi-17 choppers.

The Airlift from Kuwait was the second largest rescue mission after Operation Vande Bharat. The operation was launched in 1990 after Kuwait was invaded by Iraq. During this mission, India rescued 1,75,000 of its nationals and Air India even found a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.

In 2011 when a civil war broke out in Libya, India launched Operation Safe Homecoming and rescued 15,400 Indians. During the Lebanon War in 2006, India launched Operation Sukoon and rescued 2,280 people which included 1,764 Indians. The rest were from Nepal and Sri Lanka.