JOIN US Several foreign students studying in the City staged a demonstration in front of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) office on Monday, protesting against a directive issued by ICCR Delhi office, asking new foreign students with ICCR scholarship to go to other cities and not come to Bangalore.
Juflex Malik, a BBM student of Acharya College hailing from South Africa, who was at the protest organised by the Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, said: “There are many Indians in South Africa and we do not tell them where to go and what to do. Foreign students should be allowed to study wherever they want without any restrictions.”
Nasratullah, a student from Afghanistan studying at a City college, said that he came to know about the ICCR directive from the principal of his college. “I read somewhere that the pub and bar culture of the City is one of the reasons for students being told to go to other cities. If this is true, are there no bars and pubs in Hyderabad or other Indian cities? These are very trivial reasons to make such serious decisions,” he said. Every year, there are 900 seats for foreign students who come to Bangalore and Mysore through the ICCR scholarship scheme, out of which, around 600 are undergraduate seats and 300 postgraduate. When asked about the reported directive issued by ICCR, Sarala Unnikrishnan, senior regional director, ICCR, Bangalore, said that she had “no idea about it” and was equally surprised about the move. “This year, no one has turned up for any undergraduate seats in Bangalore. We are still hoping for at least 50 seats to be filled in postgraduate courses,” she said.
Sarala said that only one third of the 900-odd seats were usually filled every year. The ICCR offers free scholarships to students from 135 countries in Asia, Africa, South and Central America, every year.