Cabinet minister and MDA government spokesperson Ampareen Lyngdoh on Tuesday informed a total of 242 citizens have been evacuated from Manipur in a period of six days.
Speaking to reporters, Lyngdoh said, “And today was the last day where we engaged in this kind of a rescue.” The evacuation started on May 5.
She said of 242 citizens, 168 were students of RIMS, 37 – CAU, 7 – Manipur University, 4 – National Sports University.
“We engaged very actively with the army and paramilitary forces of the state of Manipur. We are very grateful that they came forward quickly to assist our students who were feeling the pressure and were under great stress,” the minister added.
Lyngdoh informed that even a former judge was also rescued during the operation.
“Even he also reached out to the government of Meghalaya. As far as my knowledge goes out likely he was also rescued but again I need to verify whether that happen but yes we had callings from all kinds of citizens and we must thank the CM as he played an exceptionally positive role in this period when there was a big threat for citizens who were in an unfortunate situation which occurred before us.”
The minister said that the evacuation was voluntary. She said, “The government of Meghalaya did not want to make it look like we forced them all to come home but we said that because we kept getting the SOS calls and people were getting tense because of the violence…we decided let us have a system put in place to quickly bring these citizens home and we were able to do so by a combination of several formulas.”
She said that the state did get a special flight from the Government of India on May 5 where 67 students were evacuated. On May 6, the government collaborated with commercial airlines and ensured that tickets were booked on behalf of the citizens because they could not book the tickets themselves because of the internet ban.