Senior Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor and Jairam Ramesh have slammed the United Kingdom government's new travel policy for India, calling it offensive and racist.
The new rules, as explained by aviation analyst Alex Macheras, say a person vaccinated in Africa, or South America, or countries including UAE, India, Turkey, Jordan, Thailand, Russia, will still be considered unvaccinated and must follow the rules for the unvaccinated—10 days of home quarantine and tests.
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Tharoor, who is the party MP from Thiruvanthapuram, quoting Macheras ' tweets, said he pulled out of a debate at Cambridge Union and withdrew from the events for the launch of the UK edition of his book The Battle of Belonging. "It is offensive to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine. The Brits are reviewing!", Tharoor tweeted.
Quoting the same thread, his party colleague and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh said UK's travel policy was "absolutely bizarre". He tweeted the policy "smacks of racism".
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On September 17, the UK government announced that from October 4, the current traffic light system of red, amber and green countries based on levels of COVID-19 risk would be scrapped and replaced with one red list only.
The scrapping of the amber list, which includes India, means a reduced cost burden for travellers, especially for the Indian diaspora vaccinated in the UK.
However, an expanded list of countries whose vaccines are recognised in England does not include India, which means that Indians vaccinated with Covishield, the Serum Institute of India produced Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, would have to undergo a pre-departure PCR test and further tests on landing in the UK, news agency PTI said.
Under the new rules, people from India will have to undergo a 10-day quarantine in the UK and during the period they will have to test for Covid-19.
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