‘Insult of entire country’, says Rahul Gandhi on claims of Indian students in Ukraine asked to clean toilets to return

New Delhi: Citing media reports on Indian students allegedly being asked to clean toilets to facilitate their evacuation from conflict-hit Ukraine, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday condemned the incident and said that it is an insult to the entire country.

“Such shameful treatment of (Indian) students is an insult to the entire country. This bitter truth of Operation Ganga has shown the real face of Modi government,” the Wayanad MP tweeted (roughly translated from Hindi) along with a media report claiming that the students were asked to clean toilets and whoever does it first would return to India first. Earlier as well, the Congress MP slammed the Centre over Operation Ganga, launched to bring Indian nationals back to the country amid ongoing Russian military operations in Ukraine. He had said that “evacuation is a duty and not a favour” done by the government.

Meanwhile, the Union Government has been ramping up its efforts to evacuate Indian nationals from Ukraine.

The government has deployed ‘special envoys’ to four neighbouring countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate and oversee the evacuation process of Indian nationals.

Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri is overseeing evacuation efforts in Hungary, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in Slovakia, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Romania and Gen VK Singh in Poland.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also chaired several meetings on the evacuation of Indian nationals from Ukraine. In the meeting, he chaired on Friday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Minister of Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and other senior officials were present.