Beyond silly: Cong's Manish Tiwari on ministers greeting Indians on evacuation flights

Ukraine evacuation: Congress leader Manish Tewari urged Union ministers to stay from “sanctimonious homilies” and get on with their job of bringing back stranded citizens. He said it was the government's duty and it was not doing anybody any favour.

Congress leader Manish Tewari on Wednesday hit out at Union ministers getting inside rescue flights to address evacuated citizens and called the acts political public relations and propaganda. He said rescuing Indians from a war zone is the Union government’s duty and the latter is not doing any favour on anyone.

File photo of Congress MP Manish Tewari. (Sonu Mehta/HT)

Many of the Union ministers have been seen greeting Indians coming back on rescue flights from inside the aircraft and interacting with the passengers onboard. Clippings and images of the same are being widely circulated in the media.

“The behaviour of some of these ministers is absolutely absurd and laughable. Young Indian students who barely escaped with the skin of their teeth from a battle zone are being subjected to sanctimonious homilies by these ministers, clamouring on to aircraft in order to do their own political public relations and propaganda in beyond silly,” the Congress MP from Punjab was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Recalling India’s evacuation efforts since the Gulf wars and beyond, Tewari said every government at the Centre has ensured to do whatever they could to bring citizens out.

He referred to Saddam Hussain’s invasion of Kuwait when the then Indian Airlines made a huge airlifting of stranded citizens. He said even the Indian Air Force was involved in the evacuation process.

“Therefore, if this government is bringing Indians out (of war-hit Ukraine), it is not doing anybody any favour. It is the job of the Government of India to protect the life and liberty of Indian citizens. My appeal to them would be to get on to their work. There are a large number of Indians who are still stuck in Ukraine and stop giving these sanctimonious homilies… I don’t know if these ministers watch themselves after they do these gigs. It’s absurd and demeaning,” he further said.

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Congress leader Siddaramaiah slammed the Narendra Modi government for naming the evacuation mission as ‘Operation Ganga’. He said the naming is aimed at raising the BJP’s publicity during the ongoing Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh. “It is unfortunate to note that @BJP4India leaders sees every crisis as an opportunity to increase their publicity. @narendramodi is using the name of river Ganga for the evacuation operation so that it helps BJP in UP elections. I hope river Ganga cleanses the sins of BJP,” the leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly wrote on Twitter.

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said, "It is truly disheartening to see Narendra Modi Government asleep even after the death of an Indian student! Urgent steps should have been taken days ago, but our PM and his ministers were busy finding "aapda mein avsar" and running their PR campaign even in the middle of a war crisis!"

The Congress has launched a "SpeakUpForStudents" campaign on social media in favour of students to exert pressure on the Modi-led BJP government to take steps to ensure early safe evacuation of all Indian students from Ukraine.

The Opposition party has been questioning the delay in evacuation of all Indians from war-struck Ukraine after Russia attacked it and criticised its response. Taking to Twitter, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi wrote, "To avert further tragedy, the Government of India (GOI) must share: How many students have been evacuated. How many are still stranded in Ukraine. Region-wise detailed evacuation plan… We owe a clear strategy and communication to the families involved."

Meanwhile, six Congress MPs from Punjab, including Tewari, met Meenakashi Lekhi, the minister of state in the ministry of external affairs, and urged her to evacuate Indian students in Ukraine at the earliest. They laid special emphasis on students held in Kharkiv, an ANI input said. She told the delegation that government is taking every step for the safety and evacuation of Indians in Ukraine