197 students from Assam still stranded in Ukraine

As many as 197 students of Assam are still stranded in war-torn Ukraine, Assam Chief Secretary Jishnu Barua told ETV Bharat on Saturday and said that the state government was in constant touch with the external affairs ministry as well as Prime Minister's Office (PMO) for the safe evacuation of all the students.

New Delhi:As many as 197 students of Assam are still stranded in war-torn Ukraine, Assam Chief Secretary Jishnu Barua told ETV Bharat on Saturday and said that the state government was in constant touch with the external affairs ministry as well as Prime Minister's Office (PMO) for their safe evacuation.

"As of today 89 students of Assam have been evacuated," said Barua. He expressed confidence that all the students will soon be evacuated from Ukraine. Asserting that the central government has prepared a contingency plan to evacuate all students from the war zone, Barua said, "to rescue students stranded in war zone areas like Sumi or Kharkiv, the government of India has prepared a contingency plan."

Labib Shamim, a student of Zaporizhzhia State Medical Universe in Ukraine said that she was fortunate enough to be evacuated from Ukraine. "We somehow managed to reach Poland from Stalevariv and from there me and many of my friends were evacuated by the Indian government," Shamim said. The student appealed the central government to take cohesive steps to evacuate all the stranded Indian students as soon as possible. As per government statistics, 89 students of Assam have been evacuated from Ukraine since February 26 with highest 30 evacuated on a single day on Thursday.

In a related development, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has initiated the process to discuss the matter related to the fate of Ukraine return Indian medical students who left their studies midway due to the ongoing war. A government official said that officials from the health ministry, National Medical Commission (NMC), Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and Niti Aayog will soon deliberate on the issue to explore ways to accommodate Indian students in the various medical institutes across the country.

On Friday, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider accommodating such students in the existing Indian medical institutes on humanitarian grounds. It may be mentioned here that presently there are no norms and regulations under the National Medical Commission Regulations to accommodate medical students in Indian institutes, who were studying abroad and had to return to India midway.