Afghanistan MP Narender Singh Khalsa breaks down as he arrives in India, says 'everything built in last 20 years finished'

Narender Singh Khalsa is among the 168 passengers, including 107 Indians, who had arrived in India from Kabul aboard a special IAF flight this morning. All the passengers will first undergo the mandatory COVID-19 RT-PCR test before being allowed to leave the airport, the officials said.

Image Credit: ANI/Twitter

NEW DELHI: Narender Singh Khalsa, who is among the two Afghan senators who arrived in India on Sunday morning, broke down after the Indian Air force special flight carrying several passengers from Afghanistan landed at the Hindon air base.

Speaking to reporters, Khalsa regretted that the progress made in the past 20 years in Afghanistan has now been completely lost.

"I feel like crying... Everything that was built in the last 20 years is now finished. It's zero now," the Afghan senator told reporters at the Hindon air base near Delhi.

#WATCH | Afghanistan's MP Narender Singh Khalsa breaks down as he reaches India from Kabul.

"I feel like crying...Everything that was built in the last 20 years is now finished. It's zero now," he says. pic.twitter.com/R4Cti5MCMv

— ANI (@ANI) August 22, 2021

Khalsa is among the 168 passengers, including 107 Indians, who had arrived in India from Kabul aboard a special IAF flight this morning. All the passengers will first undergo the mandatory COVID-19 RT-PCR test before being allowed to leave the airport, the officials said.

According to the MEA estimates, around 400 Indians are stranded in Afghanistan. India has been allowed to operate two flights per day from Kabul to evacuate its nationals stranded in Afghanistan, government sources said.

The permission was granted by American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces which have been controlling operations of the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban on August 15. 

In a lightning sweep across the war-ravaged country, the Taliban took over the presidential palace in Afghanistan on Sunday, 15 August, ousting the US-backed Ashraf Ghani government.

People in Afghanistan have been rushing to leave the country after the Taliban seized control last week. Several countries have been urgently evacuating their citizens from the war-torn nation. 

The Kabul airport has been witnessing a chaotic situation due to a growing rush among the locals to flee the country fearing the return of the barbaric Taliban regime. 

The MEA has said the Narendra Modi government is committed to the safe return of all Indian nationals from Afghanistan. The MEA said that the main challenge for travel to and from Afghanistan is the operational status of the Kabul airport.