Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president K.S. Alagiri has criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim at an election rally that India was able to evacuate its citizens from Ukraine due to the country’s rising power even as thousands of Indian students were stranded in the war zone.
Mr. Modi was trying to gain political capital from the crisis while students received no help, Mr. Alagiri charged in a statement. “The government has just asked the students to leave the war zone and go to neighbouring countries. The Indian embassy there had just given a very short notice to the students to leave. Even after so many days since the war began, this government has not taken any concrete decision for the evacuation of students,” Mr. Alagiri alleged.
Mr. Alagiri said the Indian government did not take any pre-emptive steps to evacuate Indians and that the embassy had just asked the students to leave the country. “But students who are stuck 800 km from the borders have no transportation facilities and do not know how to leave the country. Many have been stuck in railway stations for two to three days without food. But the embassy had not got in touch with them to provide help,” he said.
Mr. Alagiri said it was highly condemnable that Mr. Modi was using this crisis situation to gain political mileage at election rallies and demanded that the government take immediate steps to evacuate those stuck in Ukraine.
