Vande Bharat Mission was launched early in May, said Union Minister for Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri on Saturday.Taking to Twitter, Puri shared data that showed that on December 18 (Friday) itself 8,546 Indians returned from various locations such as Sharjah, Dubai, London, Toronto, San Francisco, among others."International travel of more than 3.9 million people facilitated ever since we launched the Vande Bharat Mission on 6 May 2020.
Now in Phase-7, the mission with 23 active air bubbles has transformed into the largest repatriation mission of its kind," Puri wrote on Twitter.The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had, however, on Thursday said that an estimated 1.3 lakh people have been brought back to India under Phase VIII Plus.