New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday informed the Supreme Court that out of a total 15,783 Indian students who had enrolled in Ukrainian medical universities, 14,973 are undergoing online classes, which have been conducted by the universities.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, in an affidavit, said: “It is submitted that information has been obtained from Ministry of External Affairs that a total 15,783 Indian students are enrolled in various medical universities of Ukraine, out of which 14,973 students are undergoing online classes conducted by concerned medical universities of Ukraine, and 640 students are undergoing offline mode of education in Ukraine. 170 students enrolled with Ukrainian universities are pursuing their education at partner universities in other countries under academic mobility programme.”
It added that though 382 students applied for academic mobility, their applications were not accepted either by the Ukrainian university or the receiving partner university, because of various reasons, which included non-payment of fee, poor academic record, or non-availability of free seats.
On November 11, the Supreme Court had asked the Centre to file an affidavit to inform it about the number of medical students who were pursuing their studies in Ukraine who have been accommodated in other countries.
On Tuesday, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Vikram Nath scheduled the petition filed by Archita and others for further hearing on November 29.
On September 16, the top court suggested that the Central government could develop a web portal providing details of foreign universities for the Ukraine-returned students to complete their studies, as per the government’s academic mobility programme.
The top court noted that the government has a problem in admitting 20,000 students in Indian colleges and added that students will have to go to foreign countries to avail alternate ‘academic mobility programme’, and the government must coordinate with them and extend all help.
The Centre had said that the medical students who returned from Ukraine cannot be accommodated in Indian universities due to the absence of any statutory provision as well as a possibility of damage to standards of medical education in the country.
(IANS)
