A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking directions to permit chartered flights from Kuwait to land in India and receive all the repatriated amnesty beneficiaries from Kuwait.
The petition has been filed by a social activist, Thomas Mathew Kadavil who has submitted that after the State of Kuwait announced an amnesty till April 30 for those who do not have valid residency permits in the country, thousands of Indian nationals surrendered to the amnesty felicitation centers (AFC) who are kept in the temporary amnesty deportee camps since the 16th of April for their safe repatriation.
However owing to the uncertainty of COVID-19 lockdown and Air Travel ban, all such Indian citizens stranded in Amnesty Felicitation Centers (AFC), Kuwait have been suffering severe hardships, states the Petitioner.
The petitioner has further highlighted the plight of the Indians at the Camps who are not getting proper food, accommodation and medical facilities. Moreover since most of the countries are proritising the health and safety of their own citizens, it is adding to the hardships of Indian citizens who are already facing problems.
The petitioner has also pointed out that Kuwait has offered to provide social chartered flights to ferry Indians back home, however, since there is ban on International flights arrivals in India , State of Kuwait is pursuing India to allow special chartered flights, however India is declining owing to precautionary measure to combat COVID-19.
It has also been highlighted that “Indians fall under the category of residency law violators are reportedly around 40,000 of which about 25,000 belong to the runaway/absconding from the work category. The wrong policies and human trafficking resulted such a large numbers of undocumented irregular Indian expatriates in Kuwait. Hundreds of Indians, who wish t o make use of the benefit of amnesty, could not reach the Amnesty Felicitation Centers (AFC) as the Indian Embassy in Kuwait did not issue the emergency certificates on time.”
The petitioner has also mentioned that he had approached the office of Prime Minister but having received no response, he had no other alternative than to approach the Supreme Court.
-India Legal Bureau