Media Release

New Delhi, Jun 24: The repatriation process of stranded Indians from across the globe has been underway for a long time now. The DGCA earlier had also tweeted a list of airlines and their operations which showed that dozens of flights were being operated under the Vande Bharat mission.

In order to facilitate smooth functioning of the process the Government of India on Wednesday, June 24 released the revised standard operating procedure (SOP) for operating chartered flights used for repatriation of stranded Indians.

The process will be as follows:

1) The chartering entity (Community Association/Company/Group etc) in Kuwait has to identify an Air Transport Operator (ATO) and provide details of passengers, destination and manifest, to the Embassy of India in Kuwait for examination and processing of Embassy's No Objection.

2) The ATO will contact the state government of the destination in India directly and share a copy of the proposal and passenger manifest with the state government.

3) State governments will perform necessary internal checks for quarantine availability.

4) ATO will obtain the state government's written clearance for the flight and Embassy's No Objection on the manifest. ATO will then contact Directorate General of Civil Aviation for flight clearance.

5) Prior to the actual departure of the flight, ATO must send the final passenger manifest to the Embassy of India in Kuwait, as well as to the concerned state government.

6) The format of the manifest remains the same as shared earlier.

7) Contact details of the state coordinators/nodal officers will be shared with ATOs by the Embassy.

For further queries, concerned are requested to write to sslabour.kuwait@mea.gov.in or labour.kuwait@mea.gov.in