Centre to send Four ministers to coordinate evacuation ops

Four cabinet ministers Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and  Gen V K Singh to travel to neighbouring countries of Ukraine to coordinate the evacuation mission and help students. These ministers will be going as Special Envoys of India. Scindia will look at Romania and Moldova.  Rijiju will go to Slovakia. Hardeep Singh Puri will go to Hungary and General V K Singh will be in Poland to manage the stranded Indians in Ukraine. The decision to send these ministers came a day after Modi asserted that ensuring the safety of Indian students and evacuating them is the government's top priority. Monday meeting was also attended by several ministers, including External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla among other senior officials. Prime Minister held a high level meeting on the Ukraine issue on Sunday too. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the government will do whatever possible to bring back all the citizens stranded in Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the Government is assessing the impact of the ongoing Ukraine crisis on Indian exports. In a post-Budget interaction with the industrialists from Tamil Nadu in Chennai on Monday, she said the Government is seized of the matter and is consulting all the departments relating to imports and exports. She said once the consultation process is over, the Finance Ministry would come out with a definitive response on how to tackle the situation and help the import and export sectors. Ms Sitharaman said exports to Russia and Ukraine are being affected more than the imports, especially the agricultural products. She said the sector is facing hurdles in exporting the farm produce as per the orders at hand and also in getting payments for those goods that have already been delivered.