According to a report by IANS, all higher education institutions in India will soon appoint a special officer to help international students with visa issues.
With several international students flying into India for their higher education, the non-availability of a designated person to be contacted by foreigners' regional registration offices (FRROs)/foreigners' registration offices (FROs) at the educational institutes, while processing service applications, is leading to unnecessary delays, difficulties and unintentional violations of visa norms by the foreigners causing undue harassment of foreign students, stated an IANS report.
"Looking into this, we have written to all the higher educational institutions to appoint compliance officers to coordinate with FRROs and FROs for ascertaining facts in respect of foreign students during grant of various services like visa registration, visa extension, exit permit and so on, along with their attendance, academic performance and other academic records,” said Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, Chairman, UGC, to IANS, while addressing this issue with international students.
The UGC also has requested higher education institutions in India to spread and share the information with all colleges and institutes affiliated with the universities. The UGC has already written to educational institutes in the country earlier to establish this system and several institutions have already appointed FRROs and FROs for assisting international students, as reported by the IANS.
The UGC had made it clear that all those international students seeking admission through the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in University Grants Commission (UGC) recognised/entitled online programmes will not need a passport as compulsory proof of identification, stated the report.
"The Second Amendment Regulations, 2022 has changed the compulsory identifier 'Passport' for international students to 'any national Identity with a photograph' of the country of residence for the admissions through MEA in UGC recognised/entitled online programmes," Kumar said. He also added that this important amendment was done a couple of months back. The amendment is for the Open and Distance Learning Programmes and Online Programmes Regulation to promote more and more international students to join Indian Universities' online programmes without difficulty through MEA-driven projects in UGC recognised/entitled online programmes, said Kumar to IANS.
