The island nation, Maldives had become a popular tourist destination for Indian tourists, including Bollywood stars, in the prior several months. Though, in the latest development, the country has banned tourists from India and other South Asian nations. As a precautionary action, the Maldives immigration issued a report stating that the country is momentarily barring entry for travelers from South Asian countries, active from May 13, 2021. “All categories of visa holders originating from South Asian countries are now temporarily restricted to enter the Maldives, until further notice,” the statement said.
This is not the initial time that the Maldives has limited tourists visiting from India. Last month, the Ministry of Tourism declared a directive preventing Indian tourists. It also created a meme wave on Twitter as social media users trolled Bollywood stars because most of them had visited the Maldives as soon as some travel limitations had been raised between the pandemic. The latest announcement issued by Maldives Immigration concerns tourists from India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Additionally, according to the authorities, this also applies to travelers who have transited in South Asian nations for the past 14 days.
These laws momentarily suspending visa holders from South Asia to enter the Maldives will also affect flights between India and the Maldives. The official Twitter account of the High Commission of India in the Maldives ordered Indian tourists now in the island country to make the required travel methods to return to India. Earlier, the Maldives had limited Indian tourists from staying at tourist amenities on occupied islands. The mandate came into effect on April 27.
For the unaware, the Maldives archipelago is a set of more than a thousand islands in the center of the Indian Ocean. So, this wasn’t a blanket prohibition on Indian travelers. Rather, it was just a limitation in which people were not permitted to stay at facilities on the populated islands. This suggested that the constraint would affect only those who would have visited these islands.
Nevertheless, leisure travelers like B-town stars, who use the beach destination as their go-to heaven, do not remain at the inhabited archipelago. Their stay is often on isolated islands that have one dedicated resort. And hence, the new law hardly hit their travel programs irrespective of the pandemic. But with the latest laws coming into force from May 13, all tourists will not be permitted to visit the island country.
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The only exception under the current laws will be referred to healthcare experts with legitimate work licenses. “Healthcare professionals are required to hold a PCR negative result with a sample taken 96 hours before their departure to the Maldives and undergo home quarantine for 14 days. They also require a negative PCR test result before they are released from quarantine (sic),” the Maldives immigration site said. India, currently pitching from the dangerous second surge of Covid-19, has reported 3,48,421 new cases and 4,205 deaths in the last 24 hours.
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