- Tuesday, May 07, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
SENIOR Indian National Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday (20) said he was pulling out of an event in the UK after the country announced that even fully vaccinated Indians will have to undergo a quarantine period on arrival there.
In a tweet, the 65-year-old parliamentarian from Thiruvananthapuram in the South Indian state of Kerala said, “Because of this I have pulled out of a debate at the @cambridgeunion & out of launch events for the UK edition of my book #TheBattleOfBelonging (published there as #TheStruggleForIndiasSoul). It is offensive to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine. The Brits are reviewing!”
Because of this I have pulled out of a debate at the @cambridgeunion &out of launch events for the UK edition of my book #TheBattleOfBelonging (published there as #TheStruggleForIndiasSoul). It is offensive to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine. The Brits are reviewing! https://t.co/YEVy3Ez5dj
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) September 20, 2021
Tharoor has been vocal against British colonial rule that lasted for centuries in India and has sought an apology, including for the horrific Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919.
The UK government has come up with relaxation in international travel rules for vaccinated people reaching England and leaving it. But it has been decided that Indians who have received both jabs of the Covishield vaccine, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India, would still have to undergo a pre-departure PCR test and other tests after landing in the UK.
The UK government has said that if a person has been vaccinated in regions like Africa, South America, India, the UAE, Turkey and few other nations, they will be considered as good as ‘unvaccinated” and will have to follow the rules and serve a 10-day home quarantine.
From October 4, the current system of red, amber and green-listed countries based on levels of Covid-19 list will be replaced with one list only – red. India was so far in the amber list.
On the other hand, travellers from 17 nations with eligible vaccines will no longer have to undergo pre-departure PCR tests for entering England and they include Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.
