Expelled from Punjab college, say 18 Kashmiri students

A day after assembly speaker Mubarak Gul had made an appeal to union home minister Rajnath Singh for the safety of Kashmiri students in different states, a private college group in Punjab is reported to have on Friday cancelled the admission of 18 of them studying under Prime Minister's special scheme.

A day after assembly speaker Mubarak Gul had made an appeal to union home minister Rajnath Singh for the safety of Kashmiri students in different states, a private college group in Punjab is reported to have on Friday cancelled the admission of 18 of them studying under Prime Minister's special scheme.

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The students inducted about a year ago in Baba Isher Singh Group of Institutions at Gagra village in Moga district of Punjab have alleged that they were first asked to clear the dues in seven days.
A student (name withheld on request) told local news agency GNS over telephone that in July 2013, the college had selected the 18, including 14 boys, under the Ministry of Human Resource Development scholarship programme. "The college then assured us that our admission would stay even if the scholarship scheme lapsed. They (college) have backtracked. This (the expulsion) is a fraud," she said.

The students were from the BTech, BPharma and BBA courses, the BTech student added. The ousted students said most of them were "depressed", and that they had tried to convince the authorities to keep their promise. Early this week, the state assembly requested the home ministry to write to all chief ministers to see that no Kashmiri student was victimised in their states. The speaker also made this appeal to all the CMs.

Gul was responding to an issue that Shangus legislator Peerzada Mansoor Hussain of the opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) had raised about a Tuesday evening incident at Swami Parmanand College, Jaulan Kalan, in Mohali district of Punjab, in which hostel mates had injured 12 of the 15 Kashmiri students cheering for Pakistan while catching its cricket match versus Sri Lanka live on television.

College denies

Baba Isher Singh Group of Institutions chairman Jasmail Singh Dhaliwal said the college had not cancelled the admissions of the Kashmiri students but only asked them to write to the department concerned of the union government to send over the scholarship money to run the scheme. "We wanted to release the scholarship payment but had not received the money for long," Dhaliwal added.