Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government on Friday reiterated that the state is keen to welcome back residents of the state who are stranded in different countries across the world and had taken the necessary precautions in this regard.
The state Home department informed that they had communicated long back about the maintenance of social distancing and other testing norms for the passengers returning from abroad to prevent the spread of COVID 19 virus and arranging of quarantine facilities for the foreign returnees.
The state government's response assumes significance with the External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava tweeting that flights to repatriate residents of West Bengal from abroad as part of Vande Bharat Mission could be arranged if the state government confirmed that it has organised quarantine facilities for them.
"GOWB keen to welcome back our people stranded in different countries and has long back communicated its agreement as well as quarantine arrangement details etc to GOI for special international inbound journeys. Letters attached. Bengal awaits flights," read the tweet of the state Home Ministry.
The letter written by state Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha on May 11, stated that the Bengal government is ready to follow the standard operating procedure (SOP) and has already put in place institutional quarantine facilities for the foreign returnees.
"We have made all arrangements in place for the returnees as per the standard operating procedure of the Centre but it is unfortunate that not a single flight has been arranged to bring back people to Kolkata," said a Nabanna official.
State Education minister Partha Chatterjee who is also the secretary-general of Trinamool Congress had tweeted on Thursday questioning the move of the Ministry of External Affair.
"Is the MEA asking us to believe that there are enough people to come from Georgia to Gujarat but none want to come to Kolkata? Also, there are enough people to come back to Bihar from Kyrgyzstan but not enough to bring back to Bengal?? Stop this injustice!!!" Chatterjee tweeted posting a schedule of the flights being organised during the second phase of Vande Bharat
Mission. The Centre is arranging 149 flights from more than 30 countries in the second phase of the massive repatriation programme to bring back some 32,000 people to more than a dozen states between May 16 to 22. West Bengal isn't among the states.
The first phase of the operation that had airlifted around 15,000 Indians stranded in different parts of the globe between May 7 to 13 had not a single flight for Kolkata.