Top News

Afghanistan Situation Critical, Evacuating Indians Top Priority: Govt At All-Party Meet

Mumbai: The central government on Thursday informed the country’s political parties that evacuation of Indian personnel from Afghanistan is a top priority as the situation in the Central Asian country, which has been taken over by the Taliban, is grim.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar briefed the parliamentary leaders of political parties about the Indian evacuation efforts so far while briefing an all-party meeting on the situation in Afghanistan.

Union minister and Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha Piyush Goyal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi were also present during the briefing in the Parliament House Annexe.

Briefing the media after a conversation of about three and a half hours, Jaishankar said that the government will definitely try to evacuate every Indian citizen.

“We apprised the leaders of all political parties about the situation in Afghanistan today. Our focus is on evacuating people and the government is doing everything to evacuate people,” the foreign minister said.

“The message that we all political parties, including the government, want to convey is that we all have a common view on this matter. We have a strong national position in Afghanistan. Friendship with the Afghan people is important to us,” he said.

The minister said that India has operated six evacuation flights so far.

“Under Operation ‘Devi Shakti’, we have done six evacuation flights. We have brought back most of the Indians, but not all of them, as some of them could not leave for the flight tomorrow. We’ll definitely try and bring out everybody. We’ve also brought out some Afghan citizens,” Jaishankar told the press.

The minister also talked about India’s future role on the Afghanistan issue.

“The government is very strongly committed to ensuring full evacuation at the earliest and is also seeing that in the context of any international decision, whatever gathering takes place, our role is recognized. There will be more meetings that day,” said the external affairs minister.

Asked about the government’s stance towards the Taliban, Jaishankar said, “The situation in Afghanistan is not resolved, let it calm down.”

On August 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) and instructed all concerned officials to undertake all necessary measures to ensure the safe evacuation of Indian nationals from Afghanistan in the coming days.

Follow us on TwitterInstagram, and like us on Facebook for the latest updates and interesting stories. 

Show More
Back to top button