The salutation “Jai Hind” reverberated inside the government-chartered Air India plane as it touched down at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai on Saturday evening.
The first evacuation flight carrying 219 passengers from war-torn Ukraine had taken off from the Romanian capital Bucharest this afternoon.
The passengers hugged each other and there were cheers and tears of joy as the first flight of Operation Ganga landed on Indian soil.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi deputed Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs & Food & Public Distribution, Piyush Goyal to receive the first flight.
“Welcome back to the motherland! Glad to see the smiles on the faces of Indians safely evacuated from Ukraine at the Mumbai airport... the mother never leaves the children in peril,” he said as the passengers burst into “Jai Hind” and cheered.
The Air India Boeing 787 aircraft, AI1943 landed around 7.50 pm.
“It was a very comfortable flight,” said one of the evacuees, a student.
“We are Indians... we knew someone would come for us. We were confident. Definitely, there were some tense moments, but we were sure... It feels great,” said another student.
वन्दे मातरम 🇮🇳
— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) February 26, 2022
The mother never leaves her children in peril. The first batch of evacuees return home to safety from Ukraine.#OperationGanga pic.twitter.com/mNLkXw3rMn
Goyal also thanked Air India. "This is a true sense of nationalism," he said.
A large number of relatives of homebound passengers were present at the arrival concourse of the Mumbai airport to receive their near and dear ones.
There were tears in the eyes of parents as their kids arrived at the airport.
“For the last two days, the Prime Minister Modi ji, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar were worried…the Prime Minister spoke to Russian President (Vladimir Putin) and Ukrainian President (Volodymyr Zelenskyy),” Goyal said, adding that while Mumbai was the first flight more evacuation flights are being operated and the second flight is likely to land in Delhi in the wee hours of Sunday.
Goyal was accompanied by Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar and Mumbai North Central MP Poonam Mahajan.
The Mayor was seen receiving the evacuees with folded hands. “They are our future,” she said.
The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport and the Bureau of Immigration and the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation had made special arrangements to handle the flight and make the arrival hassle-free.
The airport has blocked a special corridor for the arriving passengers, CSMIA said, adding as per the guidelines laid down by the government, the Airport Health Organization (APHO) team at the facility will be conducting mandatory temperature checks.
Passengers would be required to produce either a Covid-19 vaccination certificate or a negative RT-PCR test report at the time of arrival.
“The BMC provided them free Covid testing, vaccines, food and all other facilities,” said Pednekar.
After the immigration formalities were done students broke into a selfie-mode with each other, Goyal and those who came to receive them.
Around 16,000 Indians, mainly students, were stranded in Ukraine, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla had said on February 24. The Indian embassy in Ukraine on Friday said it is working to establish evacuation routes from Romania and Hungary.
(With PTI inputs)
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