New Delhi

A special evacuation flight will depart from New Delhi to Kosice, Slovakia Tuesday afternoon to bring back Indians stranded in Ukraine. Union Minister for Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju will be on-board the flight, travelling as a special envoy of the Indian Government to oversee the evacuation.

The SpiceJet flight, Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, is scheduled to depart at 3:30 PM from New Delhi and is scheduled to arrive in Kosice, Slovakia at 7:50 PM (IST). The aircraft will fly directly to Kosice from Delhi and will return via a technical halt at Kutaisi in Georgia. The aircraft is scheduled to return by 7:40 AM on March 3.

This comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday deputed four Union Ministers to neighbouring countries of Ukraine to coordinate evacuations of stranded Indians amid ongoing Russian military operations in Ukraine

Other ministers deputed to manage evacuations include Union Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia in Romania and Molodova, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri in Hungary and Minister of State in the Ministry of Road Transport Gen (Retd) VK Singh in Poland.

This is the second evacuation flight being operated by SpiceJet under 'operation Ganga' after a special flight left last night for the Hungarian capital Budapest from New Delhi.

The airline is in discussion with the authorities concerned to operate more evacuation flights in the coming days.

India’s evacuation exercise called Operation Ganga is currently on to bring back stranded students and Indian citizens from the Ukraine where a war is raging. Special flights are being operated by Air India and other airlines as well as part of Operation Ganga.

Earlier on Monday, the Ministry of External Affairs said that India has evacuated over 8,000 nationals since the initial advisories were issued.