Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said that the government was making arrangements to bring back stranded students in Kota, Rajasthan due to the lockdown imposed to control the spread of Coronavirus.

The move comes after many states including Maharashtra, UP, Karnataka among others came forward to evacuate their students from Kota.

The Maharashtra government deployed a fleet of 70 buses to bring back over 1,700 students who are stuck in Kota.

The buses left from Maharashtra’s Dhule district around 10.30 am on Wednesday and arrived in Rajasthan by night. The buses have been sanitized and will maintain adequate ‘physical distancing’ precautions during the 650-kms journey to and from Kota. Each has two drivers.

The development came five days after senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan raised the issue with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on bringing back around 6,000-7,000 students from the state who are stranded in different countries around the world besides around 2,000 stuck in Kota owing to national lockdown.

Following the plea, Thackeray asked Transport Minister Anil Parab to coordinate with the Centre and Rajasthan governments and after getting all the clearances, the buses were shown the green flag.

Minister of State for Revenue and Guardian Minister for Dhule, Abdul Sattar said that all precautions have been taken for the drivers who are provided face masks, sanitisers, besides maintaining ‘physical distancing’ norms to ensure an event-free journey.

Around 2,500-3,000 students from West Bengal, stranded at Kota due to lockdown, began their return journey on Wednesday evening to the state.

A week ago, Uttar Pradesh had brought back more than 7,500 students and they have been placed in 14-day quarantine in their homes.

The Assam government has also facilitated the return of 391 students stranded in Rajasthan’s Kota amid the nationwide lockdown restrictions.

Kota is a hub of coaching institutes for India’s premier entrance exams for medical and engineering colleges. Around 30 lakh people reside in the city out of which a major chunk is of students who come to prepare for entrance exams.

The Centre on Wednesday gave the go-ahead to students, migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists and others to return to their destination, 36 days after the lockdown was implemented.

Th government issued an order to all the States and Union Territories to facilitate Inter-State movement of stranded people including migrant labourers in the country.

As per the guidelines laid down by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, all the persons to be transported have to be medically screened at both the source and destination and kept in home/institutional quarantine on arrival.

It has also been impressed upon that on arrival at their destination, such person(s) would be assessed by the local health authorities and kept in home quarantine, unless the assessment requires keeping the person in institutional quarantine. They would be kept under watch with periodic health check-ups.