Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have arranged special flights, while the Rajasthani government is talking to private airline IndiGO about bringing back some 125 Rajasthani residents from Imphal, most of them students. Manipur’s northeastern neighbors Assam, Meghalalaya and Tripura have already started the process of evacuating their stranded residents in the conflict-affected state.
About 240 students from other states studying in Manipur were said to have been evacuated as of Sunday, but many more remained stranded on campuses. All flights out of Imphal were fully booked for the next few days and airfares on the Imphal-Kolkata route increased to Rs 22,000-Rs 30,000.
02:36
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Maharashtra has 22 students in Manipur and a plan has been made to airlift them first to Assam and then fly them back home. CM Eknath Shinde’s office said 14 of these students were transferred to Shiv Sena’s Imphal office.
“I spoke to two of them, Vikash Sharma and Tushar Awhad. I assured them we are planning a special flight. I told them not to be afraid,” Shinde said.
Arpit from Lucknow is among hundreds of terrified and anxious students waiting to leave. “We are not getting adequate food and water,” he said from his hostel in NIT Imphal. The BTech fourth-year student said about 200 UP students were on campus.
As calls for help rang out, UP CM Yogi Adityanath ordered officials to make arrangements to evacuate state students and other people from Manipur.
“I spoke to the Chief Secretary of Manipur and shared with him a list of students available to us. He has assured us of help if a student is willing to return to his or her home state,” UP (house) Chief Secretary Sanjay Prasad said. “So far we have compiled a list of 25 students.”
01:08
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Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami has asked officials to bring back a student of the state who is studying at Imphal Central Agriculture University.
About 150 students from Andhra Pradesh are stranded in Manipur and the state government is organizing a special flight that can carry as many people. State Education Minister Botsa Satyanarayana said the Union Civil Aviation Ministry would inform about flight schedules.
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Neighboring Telangana has identified 250 students studying in Manipur. There may be more. They will be ferried out of Manipur on commercial flights and a batch was due to land in Hyderabad on Sunday, but there appears to be some delay.
According to Haryana Chief Secretary Sanjeev Kaushal, seven students from Panipat were transferred from IIIT Imphal to a safe place. The Manipur government has appointed a key officer for their safe evacuation.
In Himachal, Shimla DC has provided two telephone numbers (0177 2655988, 9816966635) which can be contacted by “any student/person” from the district blocked in Manipur.
01:52
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A Calcutta bank official is among thousands waiting at Imphal airport to catch a flight. “But the airfares have hit the roof and almost all flights to Kolkata and Guwahati are full,” he said.
Airfares have become unusually high and unaffordable, according to travel agents, who also warned that fares were unlikely to normalize any time soon. Aman Thakur, a student from Delhi, said, “Students from other states are being evacuated by their governments. Some are taken on charter flights and others on a nominal airfare. I am stuck here with three other friends from Delhi as we cannot afford the huge fares the airlines are charging.”
For 13 odd-numbered students from Madhya Pradesh, it’s like living in a war zone. “We want to leave Manipur but all we have so far are insurances. There have been bomb explosions near my hostel. I want to go home,” said Sashibhan Tiwari, a third-year BSc (sports coach) student in Imphal.
Students are mainly enrolled in the IIIT and NIT faculties of engineering as well as the regional institute of medical sciences, all three in the capital Imphal. “Students on campuses are safe. The situation in Imphal is under control and importantly, more than 90 percent of students from other states study in Imphal’s central educational institutions,” said Wangjam Sanatomba, assistant secretary general of North East Students Organization (NESO). .
Students from other NE states made up the majority of a group of 240 that left Imphal Sunday night, he said.
(Entry from Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Bhopal, Hyderabad)
Clock Special flight arranged to take stranded Maharashtra students to riot-hit Manipur: CM Eknath Shinde
