Bringing citizens back could pose risk to population here: Govt tells SC

NEWDELHI:The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that evacuation of Indian students and expatriates stuck abroad amid the lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease could pose a risk to India’s domestic population.

Echoing the Centre’s concerns, the bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and justices LN Rao and MM Shantanagouder said, “Stay where you are”.

The Centre made the submission in response to a batch of petitions seeking the court’s intervention for evacuation of Indian migrants stranded in Middle East, fishermen in Iran and students from the US and the UK.

The petitioners criticized the travel ban at a time when other countries were making arrangements to evacuate their citizens from India.

The Centre, in its status report said that the country had evacuated citizens from China, Iran, Japan and Italy when the condition in India was not as grim.

“However, given the present situation of the corona virus outbreak in India and the available limited resources, it is not feasible to selectively evacuate Indian citizens from abroad,” the report by the Centre said.

“Travel back of such passengers to different regions of India poses a grave risk to the country of a population of over 1.3 billion.”

The bench also noted the logistical constraints in arranging quarantine facilities for returnees. The Centre proposed to the Court, “The approach of the Government has, therefore, been to advise the Indian nationals to stay put where they are in line with Government’s approach to contain the further spread of the virus in India and allow health machinery to focus on domestic containment effectively.”

THE SC WAS HEARING PLEAS FILED FOR EVACUATION OF INDIAN MIGRANTS STRANDED IN MIDDLE EAST, STUDENTS IN THE US AND THE UK AND FISHERMEN IN IRAN