‘Will add more countries and flights to our evacuation plan’
U nion civil aviation minister Hardeep Puri talks about the government’s mammoth plan to evacuate stranded Indians and the resumption of domestic flights in an interview with Anisha Dutta. Edited excerpts:
The government’s evacuation of stranded Indians begins Thursday. Give us a sense of the scale of this effort. You have given an estimate of about 190,000 people but there is no clarity on how many we will be evacuating.
The figure of 190,000 was a working hypothesis for MEA. Our missions are in touch with people who have expressed a desire to come back . When we started looking at the mechanics and modalities for the evacuation flights and we started going to greater details the first impression that we got was that the overall figure of 190,000 would actually be conservative and the figure would end up many times higher.
The total number of Indian nationals in the Gulf alone goes into several millions. Some of them need to come back because they are in distress, some of their visas have expired, some of them are facing deportation and others are in an emergency situation. Our ability to bring these people back is directly dependent on the arrangements that the state governments can make to receive this people.
It is absolutely imperative that all those coming from abroad will have to be subjected to a mandatory 14 days quarantine.
Tomorrow three flights are planned, one to Singapore and two to Abu Dhabi. We will see how this process proceeds.
An operation of this magnitude, might be the largest and the most comprehensive programme ever attempted. We will refine the programme for the coming weeks—we will add more countries and more flights.
How long will this take?
I am not committing myself to the total number to be evacuated; within how much time we do this will depend on the manner in which we are able to execute this in consultation with the state governments. As far as the civil aviation component is concerned we can ramp that up. We have 650 aircraft at our disposal; some of them are long-haul... We have the plan of the first week to ferry 14,800 people in 64 flights; in the next week we will look at an increase in numbers depending on our experience during first week.
Is there a plan to help NRIs stuck in India?
All Indian citizens who are ordinarily resident aboard NRIs-- we would be happy to open bookings for them. But you have to factor in another issue which is that many countries are not receiving or not willing to receive people who are not their nationals. For instance, I thought people from Dubai who are stranded here could be sent back but they are not allowing any foreign nationals to come back.
You used the word evacuation and you talk about it as a commercial operations as well.
Where does it say that evacuation means it has to be gratis? Nowhere. Let’s look at this realistically; these are people who went abroad to earn their livelihood, some are in difficult situations because they don’t have jobs anymore but at the same time the state is providing a service through a civil aviation company. That company (Air India) is also being barely kept afloat... There are irresponsible members of opposition parties saying it should be free ... It cannot be done free because there’s a cost to it and the charge which has been levied -- ₹12,000 from the Gulf, ₹50,000 from UK, it is reasonable...
Is there a plan to begin flight operations domestically as well for those stranded in states?
In the process of easing mobility you don’t want an exponential growth in the infections... in the process of opening mobility there is always risk . Hence you have to simultaneously do two things; put in place safeguards and precautionary measures and Standard Operating Procedures and on the other hand you ease mobility. I think we have reached a stage where we will just start getting used to the idea that the virus is going to be around for a while but we will not allow it to completely circumscribe or curtail our normal economic activity.
One sense from the government is that there will be a gradual resumption of services? How will it be done ?
The civil aviation resumption of domestic traffic cannot be taken in isolation. When you open up domestic flights you will also have to open up traffic in railways, and other modes of surface transport... It will all be part of a package. My expectation is that we will do it in a calibrated manner...
When can we expect an economic stimulus for the civil aviation sector?
I am not in the habit of anticipating what my senior colleague the finance minister is going to say. My ministry and all the senior officials have personally been in touch with all the airlines. We know exactly where they are seeking relief and have brainstormed with them and passed on some of their suggestions to the finance ministry. But the size of the package, stimulus etc is not for me to comment.