India’s government has conveyed fresh hopes that additional countries would take action to normalise the overseas movement of people from India.

The government has discussed the issue of travel curbs for Indian people with foreign governments given that the coronavirus situation in the country has significantly improved.

"With the improvement in the Covid-19 situation in India, we have been taking up with foreign countries the issue of easing travel restrictions for Indians," Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs said at a media briefing.

"We believe that this is an important element towards economic recovery. There have been some positive steps in this direction," Bagchi went on to add.

A number of countries imposed restrictions on the entry of Indians and halted flights to and from the country as the second wave of coronavirus rampaged earlier this year.

The government’s action comes at a time when many people, particularly university students, struggled to travel back to India as a result of the restrictions.

Earlier this month, the ministry announced it forecast several countries would continue to relax the travel curbs for Indians as the Covid situation had “vastly improved”: “As we have said earlier, we hope that with the vastly improved Covid situation in India, countries would ease restrictions for travel from India. We have been taking up this issue with foreign partners wherever possible.”

Meanwhile, this week the United Arab Emirates prolonged its ban on international flights from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka over Covid fears.

At the height of the second wave in India, the number of daily new coronavirus infections surged, with around 400,000 reported each day. These were, in part, fuelled by the so-called Delta variant.

At the time of writing, 31,293,062 million cases of the virus have been registered in India, with 419,502 fatalities.