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More than 32.79 lakh foreigners, together with over 61,000 Americans, visited India in 2020 when the nation was on a protracted spell of nationwide lockdown and different restrictions because of the Covid pandemic.
Among the foreigners who visited India included 4,751 Pakistani nationals.
According to the annual report of the Ministry of Home Affairs for 2020-21, a complete of 32,79,315 overseas nationals visited India between April 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020.
The most variety of foreigners who visited India during this era had been from the US (61,190) adopted by these from Bangladesh (37,774), the UK (33,323), Canada (13,707), Portugal (11,668) and Afghanistan (11,212). A complete of 8,438 German nationals, 8,353 French residents, 7,163 from Iraq and 6,129 from Republic of Korea additionally visited India during this era.
These 10 international locations accounted for 71.23 per cent of the full arrival of foreigners during the interval April 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020, the report mentioned.
The coronavirus-induced nationwide lockdown was first introduced in India from March 25 to April 21 in 2020 and it was prolonged thrice until May 31, 2020.
Even although the federal government had introduced gradual reopening of assorted actions from June 2020, many restrictions continued for the remaining months of 2020.
Scheduled worldwide flights from India to worldwide locations remained suspended for 2 years from March 25, 2020 to March 27, 2022.
However, during this era, worldwide flights had been operated below the “air bubble” preparations.
There had been visa restrictions too on foreigners travelling to India after the COVID-19 outbreak.
The report mentioned owing to the scenario arising out of COVID-19 pandemic and in order to manage its unfold, the MHA took a sequence of steps to curtail the inward and outward motion of worldwide passengers (each foreigners in addition to Indians) in a calibrated method since February, 2020.
However, with the phased unlocking in India, the central authorities has been enjoyable the visa and journey restrictions in a phased method since May, 2020.
The MHA issued orders on October 21, 2020 allowing following classes of overseas nationals to enter India by water routes or by flights together with these below the Vande Bharat Mission or ‘air bubble’ (bilateral air journey preparations) scheme or by any non-scheduled industrial flights as allowed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
Those who had been allowed embrace Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholders and Person of Indian Origin (PIO) cardholders holding passports of any nation.
All overseas nationals intending to go to India for any function (together with their dependents on an applicable class of dependent visa) besides these on vacationer visa had been additionally allowed.
(Only the headline and film of this report might have been reworked by the Business Standard workers; the remainder of the content material is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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