British embassy officials indicated on Tuesday that there could be a nexus between travel agents in Punjab and tainted educational institutions in UK.
British embassy officials here indicated on Tuesday that there could be a nexus between travel agents in Punjab and tainted educational institutions in UK that resulted in the sudden flood of applications for student visas.
British deputy high commissioner Nigel Casey said 13,500 applications were received during the October-December quarter last year, against 1,800 and 1,200 for the corresponding period in 2008 and 2007 respectively.
He said visa services in Chandigarh, Jalandhar and Delhi had been suspended in the interests of “real students who are not beguiled or cheated by clandestine operators, both in India and UK, who appeared to be hand-in-glove with each other”.
Maintaining that efforts were on to streamline the system, the official said there were about 2,000 licenced educational institutions in UK, of which nearly 100 were suspended pending investigations.
While giving no definite time when visa services would resume, Casey indicated that visa-seekers could be genuine or fake students willing to migrate to European countries.
“Students are advised to conduct proper research before deciding to apply for admission. But those taking admission to a public-funded university or institution should not worry,” he said.
Educational links between India and UK are a vital part of bilateral relations, he said, and asserted, “We are keen that Indian students should continue to study in the UK. But some applicants are attempting to abuse our visa processes and we will not let this happen.”
The rush of applications, he said, not only put an additional burden on the staff but also made them cautious as October-December was normally lean for admissions.
The embassy officials spoke about how students had to suffer after landing in UK as some educational institutions were blacklisted.
“After going through the grill of visa processing, they are put to hard times on landing in the UK, as they are told that the college to which they had been admitted had either been suspended or blacklisted. No alternative was offered. Such students had to sulk and wait for months to get their fees (deposited in advance) refunded, jeopardising chances of seeking admission elsewhere,” an official said, adding that the embassy sought to put an end to it.
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