Several countries including the US, Canada and the UK are easing travel restrictions for Indian students, and more nations are expected to follow the suit as COVID-19 situation improves, the government said on Thursday.
"The government has been making efforts for easing travel restrictions, wherever in place, for Indian students enrolled in foreign universities to make their travel to respective countries possible," Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan said in the Rajya Sabha.
He said the Indian missions abroad have been actively taking up the issues with the respective governments and have been impressing upon those governments to ease the travel restrictions.
The minister said several countries including the US, the UK, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Georgia are already easing the restriction and more countries are expected to open up when the Covid situation improves.
After India was badly hit by the second wave of the pandemic, a number of countries imposed travel restrictions for Indians.
On Tuesday, three Lok Sabha members from Kerala urged the government to take measures to address the problems faced by Indians in travelling overseas. The problems of thousands of Indian students, who are pursuing courses in China, being stranded in India due to travel curbs have also been flagged by the three Congress party members—V K Sreekandan, Hibi Eden and T. N. Prathapan.
These issues were raised by them during a meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar here on Tuesday and they also submitted a memorandum to the minister.