In April, after prolonged representations from India, China agreed to permit the return of “some” stranded Indian students and asked the Indian Embassy here to collect the details of the students wanting to return.
As per earlier reports, over 23,000 Indian students, mostly studying medicine in Chinese colleges, are stuck in India after they returned home as the coronavirus broke out in China in December 2019. They could not return to China due to the restrictions imposed by the Chinese government to arrest the spread of the contagion.
China is yet to come up with a criterion to permit the return of the students as Beijing is reluctant to allow such large number of people to return at once in view the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in the country.
Currently, only diplomats between the two countries travel through the expensive third-country flight routes.
(This has been published in partnership with PTI.)