With Russia continuing its attack in Ukraine, India has stepped up its rescue mission with Operation Ganga. The safety of its nationals has always remained a top priority for the country. A look back at evacuations that were carried out in the past
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its sixth day, India is doing all it can to evacuate thousands of its citizens, many students, stranded in the war-ridden nation.
‘Operation Ganga‘, the government-launched initiative to bring back Indians stuck in Ukraine, is in full swing. So far, India has brought back more than 1,000 of its nationals with the latest flight arriving in Mumbai on Tuesday morning, carrying 182 nationals.
The first evacuation flight rescued 219 Indians to Mumbai on Saturday evening from the Romanian capital Bucharest, where these nationals had fled after fighting continued unabated in Ukraine.
India has stepped up its efforts to evacuate its citizens on Monday, as External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar tweeted about the ninth flight. “We will not rest till our fellow Indians are safe,” he wrote on Twitter.
On Monday, the government also sent four Union ministers – Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju, Hardeep Singh Puri, Gen VK Singh – to countries neighbouring Ukraine to lead rescue operations of Indians who crossed over the borders.
Also read: Explained: Why medical universities in Ukraine attract Indian students in big numbers
With 24×7 control centres and an OpGanga helpline on Twitter, the government is leaving no stone unturned in evacuating more than 18,000 citizens who find themselves in the middle of the conflict.
The country has always been proactive in answering the SOS of Indians abroad, especially in times of crisis. Be it the pandemic, natural disasters, or war, India has been successfully conducted large-scale evacuations. Here’s a look at some of its most ambitious rescue ops.
Vande Bharat Mission
The Vande Bharat Mission {VBM}, which was started to bring back Indians stranded abroad amid the coronavirus pandemic, is one of the largest civil evacuations carried out by a country. India evacuated more than 1.8 million citizens in over 15 phases in an operation that kick-started in May 2020 and stretched well into 2021. Apart from flights, naval ships carried 3,987 Indians back home and 5,02,151 were repatriated via land border crossings, according to a Moneycontrol report.
The first two Air India flights of the Vande Bharat Mission carried back 363 nationals from the United Arab Emirates to Kerala on 7 May 2020. There was no looking back after that. According to data from the civil aviation ministry, almost 30,000 flights operated as part of the mission until 2 August 2021.
Operation Raahat
In April 2015, as conflict raged in Yemen between its government and Houthi rebels, India swung into action to repatriate its citizens. Amid aerial bombardment, the government evacuated 6,688 people from Yemen, including 4,741 Indians and 1,947 foreign nationals by air and sea routes. Among those rescued were citizens from Britain, France, the United States, and Pakistan.
Leading ‘Operation Raahat’ was VK Singh, the then minister of state for external affairs, who shuttled between the Yemeni capital Sana’a and adjoining Djibouti.
“The bombings are still on. There was trouble in evacuating them, yet we did our task,” he had told reporters after he arrived in Delhi, post the evacuation in April 2015.
Operation Maitri
On 25 April 2015, Nepal was hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that left close to 9,000 dead and more than 21,000 injured. India stepped up to help the neighbouring nation with massive relief and rescue efforts, named ‘Operation Maaitri’, which started within 15 minutes after the tragedy struck.
The Indian Air Force and civilian aircraft rescued 5,000 Indians from the quake-hit nation along with foreign nationals from the US, the UK, Russia, and Germany. India mobilised its Il-76, C-130J Hercules, and C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft and Mi-17 helicopters for airlifting those stranded in Nepal.
Operation Safe Homecoming
In 2011, civil war broke out in Libya as rebel forces decided to oust its dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Protests intensified and spread across the country after demonstrators in Benzaghi clashed with the police. By mid-February, all of Libya was on the edge.
With thousands of Indians working in the North African nation, the Indian government was keeping a close watch. As tensions escalated, it launched Operation Safe Homecoming on 26 February and rescued 15,400 Indians. They were brought home on nine special flights from Libya and the neigbouring nations of Egypt and Malta. The sea route was also used for some evacuations with the help of the Indian Navy.
Operation Sukoon
During the 2006 Lebanon War, a military conflict broke out between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group. Around 10,000 Indians lived in Lebanon at the time, of which 2,000 were in the conflict zone.
India carried out Operation Sukoon to evacuate its citizens along with those from Sri Lanka and Nepal. At the end of the rescue op, 2,280 people were brought back safely – 1,764 Indians, 112 Sri Lankans, 64 Nepalese, and seven Nepalese nationals with Indian spouses, according to The Indian Express.
The airlift from Kuwait
This remains the second-largest rescue operation undertaken by the Indian government, the first being the Vande Bharat Mission. The op was launched in 1990, between August and October, after Kuwait was invaded by Iraqi forces. Air India and other aircraft were deployed to rescue 1,75,000 people. The scale of the evacuations was massive, so much so that Air India found a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records for airlifting the largest number of people in a civilian plane.
With inputs from agencies
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