At least 48 Gujarati tourists who got stranded in Nepal following the quake have returned safely and efforts are on by the state government to bring back the rest of the tourists from Nepal. The offices of Relief Commissioner in Gandhinagar and Resident Commissioner in New Delhi are working in close coordination to bring back the stranded tourists, Relief Commissioner D N Pandey said. Pandey said that as per estimates, around 600 Gujarati tourists were in Nepal when the quake hit, but no casualty was reported from among them.
So far 48 of them have come back, Pandey said. He added that since it was not possible to track all the tourists who come back, as many would not intimate the authorities about their return, it would not be possible to give an exact figure of how many had returned.
“Forty eight have surely come back and a group of 40 students from Rajkot have also left for Gujarat. The road from Gorakhpur has also opened and tourists have started coming back.”
The Gujarat government is coordinating with the Centre and airport authorities to facilitate the return of Gujarati tourists stuck in Nepal and has made arrangements for their stay in Delhi. Its Resident Commissioner's office is coordinating with the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian embassy in Kathmandu and also working with airport authorities for in-bound passengers, official sources said.
Officials are at the airport are working round the clock. At Gujarat Bhavan, facilities are made for the halt of tourists. Chairing a high-level meeting on providing relief material to the quake-hit Nepal, Chief Minister Anandiben Patel instructed state authorities to send 25,000 food packets for the quake victims in Nepal, said an official release. The release added that the Chief Minister had directed the concerned officials to send the food packets, consisting of dry food, glucose, dry sugar, puri etc to the office of the Relief Commissioner in Delhi immediately by air so that it could to sent and distributed in Nepal.
311 Tamil Nadu and nearly 1,000 Maharshtra tourists stranded
A total of 311 pilgrims and tourists from Tamil Nadu and nearly 1,000 from Maharshtra were stranded in Nepal, officials said. "After the quake, Tamil Nadu government immediately took steps to bring back the stranded people,” an official release in Chennai said. "Those belonging to Tamil Nadu are safe. The state government has taken all efforts for their safe return. Relatives of those stranded need not be worried," it said.
Government said officials of Tamil Nadu House in Delhi have been instructed to take appropriate steps to rescue those stranded and added that an official has been posted to liaison with the External Affairs Ministry on the issue. Two officials have also been posted at Delhi Airport to bring stranded people to Tamil Nadu House and to arrange for their return to their respective towns in the State.
A Maharashtra government official said nearly 800-1,000 tourists and mountaineers from different parts of Maharashtra were in Nepal and all were safe. Additional Resident Commissioner Samir Sahai of Maharashtra Sadan in New Delhi is coordinating the relief efforts on behalf of the state government. He said that nearly 200 stranded people have got in touch with the Control Room.
"In turn, they informed us that they have established contact with all persons known to them, or their families, groups or tourist charters. Though we cannot provide the exact figures, roughly 800-1,000 people from Maharashtra could be present there and all are safe," Sahai said.
A Mumbai team of 15 mountaineers, who had gone for an expedition to Mt Annapurna are reported to be safe and have reached Kathmandu.
