MP Shashi Tharoor pulls out of book launch events in UK in protest
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After the UK government said that vaccinated people from certain nations, including India, will be considered "unvaccinated" and are required to undergo ten days of home quarantine upon arrival in the UK, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor pulled out of several scheduled events. The Thiruvananthapuram Member of Parliament (MP) was supposed to attend a debate on 'free speech society in Cambridge' at the Cambridge Union and several launch events for his book 'The Battle of Belonging'.
He shared a tweet about the UK's new rule about vaccinated Indians and added that he has pulled out of the events because of the said rule. He added that it is offensive to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine.
Other nations on the list, along with India, are Russia, Thailand, Jordan, Turkey, UAE, South America, and Africa. The UK has approved the Indian-made version of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
Alex Macheras, aviation analyst and columnist in the UK, tweeted that it is "quite something for the UK to take such a stance against so many countries vaccine rollout... especially those countries administering the exact same vaccine as UK (Pfizer/AZ/Moderna/etc)."
The UK government has relaxed travel restrictions for vaccinated people from certain countries. They do not need to take an RT-PCR test before boarding the planes.