Now, India bans entry of Indians from EU, Turkey and UK

India today further extended its ban on arriving international passengers, saying that it would not allow entry to even Indian passport holders residing in the United Kingdom, Turkey and whole of Europe till the end of March.
“Travel of passengers from member countries of the European Union, the European free trade association, Turkey and the United Kingdom to India is prohibited with effect from March 18, 2020. No airline shall board passengers from these nations to India with effect from 1200 GMT on March 18, 2020. The airline shall enforce this at the port of initial departure. Both these instructions are temporary measures and shall be in force till March 31, 2020, and will be reviewed subsequently,” said the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

While European Union consists of 27 countries spread across Europe, European free trade association constitutes four members that Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland.

This ban follows a recent ban on entry foreign passport holders and Overseas Indian Citizen (OCI) cardholders into the country starting Friday last week. However, Indian passport holders were allowed to enter India.

This ban is set to impact flight operations of many airlines, who will now have to cancel flights into India till the end of this month.

Even before the Indian government announced its decision to close the country from Friday and the current ban, several foreign and international carriers had cancelled over 500 flights to and from India. With the new restrictions in place, a large number of cancellations will happen by European carriers.

Covid-19, which has infected 170,000 people across the globe and led to deaths of over 6,500, has been declared a pandemic by the WHO. India has far less about 112 reported cases but the government fears that number are set to rise.

The ban on the European countries and the UK follows Europe being declared the new epicentre of coronavirus, which had originated in Wuhan province of China.

Meanwhile, the government has also expanded the compulsory quarantine - for a period of 14 days - for passenger coming from UAE, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait with effect from 1200 GMT on March 18, 2020.

India had late last week announced to compulsorily quarantine passengers coming from seven countries that are China, Korea, Iran, Spain, France, Germany and Italy. It had also decided to put them under three categories depending on their health. With this addition, India has made Indian nationals coming from 11 nations to go through a mandatory quarantine.