BJP MP Varun Gandhi on Monday slammed the Centre over the evacuation process of Indians, including students, stuck in war-torn Ukraine, accusing it of looking for ‘opportunity’ in every disaster.
“More than 15,000 students are still stuck in the battlefield amid mismanagement because [the government] didn’t take the right decisions at the right time. Ensuring their safe return by taking concrete strategic and diplomatic action is not a favour but our responsibility. One shouldn’t look for ‘opportunity’ in every disaster,” Gandhi tweeted along with a video of an Indian student stuck in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv who alleged that the Indian government was doing nothing to rescue her along with others.
In the video, the girl claims that while other countries have rescued their citizens, the Indian government was “doing nothing” for them. Referring to the Indian Embassy’s advisory to pull back to western Ukraine, the student said they were 800 km away from the border and have no means to travel that distance without official assistance.
“We have been continuously calling (Indian embassy staff) but he is rejecting our calls. This is despite us sharing videos of girls being beaten up mercilessly at the Romanian border. Just this afternoon the embassy told us that all those in Kyiv who can leave by taking trains should do so, but instead of giving us guidance, they are completely ignoring us,” she alleged.
“They say they are evacuating Indian students from the border. The border is 800 km away from our current location. How are we as students supposed to go to those borders? The Indian government is not helping us at all,” she added.
Gandhi’s charge on the government comes on a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a high-level meeting in which he directed four Union ministers — Hardeep Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and V K Singh — to visit the neighbouring countries of Ukraine to coordinate the evacuation process.
Scindia will take care of evacuation efforts from Romania and Moldova while Rijiju will go to Slovakia. The sources said that Puri will go to Hungary while Singh will be in Poland to manage the evacuation.
India has already set up round-the-clock “control centres” in Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia to assist in the evacuation of Indian nationals from Ukraine through border-crossing points with these countries.
It has also launched Operation Ganga and is operating evacuation flights from Romania and Hungary to bring back Indians. Around a thousand Indians have already been flown out of Budapest and Bucharest and another 1,000 have been evacuated from Ukraine through land routes.
Gandhi has been lately a vocal critic of the government’s policies and slammed thr Centre several times over the year-long farmers’ protest against the now-repealed farm laws.
Earlier this month, Gandhi cornered the government over massive bank frauds and the economic offenders behind them.
Listing names of economic offenders Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Rishi Agarwal — former chairman of ABG Shipyard currently under the scanner for a massive fraud — Gandhi took a swipe at the centre, saying a “strong government” is expected to take “strong action” against such corruption.
