For two years, Yasmeen Azimi, a 22-year-old Afghan student, has been struggling to obtain a visa to proceed her research in India. Despite being admitted to a postgraduate programme in political science at Chandigarh University underneath a scholarship from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in January 2021, her visa application has been rejected thrice.
Explode of External Affairs (MEA) invalidated all present Afghan visas, together with student visas, following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. Consequently, Azimi and hundreds of other Afghan college students have been left in limbo, unable to continue their schooling in India.
The Indian authorities directed Afghan nationals to use for e-visas, that are solely legitimate for six months and granted in uncommon circumstances. However, solely 300 e-visas were issued to Afghans last 12 months, leaving greater than 2,500 Afghan college students enrolled in Indian universities and faculties stranded in Afghanistan.
The ICCR had beforehand offered 1,000 annual scholarships to Afghan nationals for undergraduate and postgraduate studies in India. More than 10,000 Afghan college students are at present finding out in numerous Indian universities. However, the cancellation of visas has disrupted the training of many Afghan college students, forcing some to seek alternatives in different nations, such as the United Arab Emirates, Europe, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.
Meena Nizami, a 22-year-old Afghan student who pursued a master’s in psychology at the University of Delhi, had to return to Afghanistan because of the coronavirus outbreak in December 2020. Frustrated by the denial of a visa and the shortage of response from Indian institutions, Nizami has now been admitted to Westford University College in the United Arab Emirates.
In 2022, Pakistan introduced four,500 scholarships for Afghan students, and greater than 7,000 Afghans are presently enrolled in varied graduate and postgraduate programmes within the country.
Onib Dadgar, a 30-year-old PhD scholar in Computer Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, has become an advocate for Afghan college students. He has reached out to India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and run campaigns on social media to raise awareness of the difficulty.
Dadgar mentioned that Gujarat Technical University (GTU) cancelled the admission of 24 Afghan engineering college students last yr because of visa issues. A GTU official justified the cancellation, stating that the university was following norms set by the ICCR, which had supplied them scholarships.
Al Jazeera contacted different ICCR officers, including Nalini Singhal, scholarship policy and admissions programme director, however obtained no response. Another ICCR official refused to provide any data regarding the cancellation of admissions..