Canteen boy from city denied US visa

With his bags almost packed, assignment completed and ‘leave application’ approved by the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), canteen attendant Santosh Shetty, 27, might not board his flight to the USA to attend the summer school scholarship programme on May 22 after all.

With his bags almost packed, assignment completed and ‘leave application’ approved by the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), canteen attendant Santosh Shetty, 27, might not board his flight to the USA to attend the summer school scholarship programme on May 22 after all.

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The reason: The American Consulate decided Shetty was “ineligible for a non-immigrant American visa” during his interview on May 12. Shetty will now have to either reapply for a second round of interviews by shelling out Rs 7,000 or just let go of his “foreign dream”.

Hindustan Times had, on Wednesday (May 11), reported how Shetty, who worked as a canteen attendant during the daytime and studied commerce in the evenings at St Xavier’s College, recently got a full scholarship to spend two weeks at the Leonard N Stern School of Business at the New York University to study ‘Bollywood and Economics’.

“During my interview, I was asked about my family background and future plans,” said Shetty, who has been working on his English for two months. “When I told the officer that I was keen on pursuing an MBA in the future, he asked me if I was planning to go to the USA with the motive of pursuing further studies there,” he said.

To add to his disappointment, the visas of only Shetty and his classmate Rovilla D’Costa, 19, have been rejected in the entire group of 40 students from St Xavier’s and HR College.