20 AP students land in Delhi

About 400 Andhra Pradesh students pursuing medical courses in violence-hit Kyrgyzstan will return home in three days. The first batch of about 150 students will arrive here in the early hours of Friday.

On Thursday, around 78 Indian medical students, 20 of them from AP, returned to Delhi safely from the trouble-torn country. They had moved to the capital Bishkek to escape the fighting took a commercial flight to Delhi and were all praise for the quick help rendered by the India embassy. ISM Focal Point, which is the authorised consultant for MBBS admissions in Kyrgyzstan, has been sending students from AP since 2004. This year, they sent about 60 students from the state.

“We were informed by the officials of Indian embassy that all our students would come back here in three days,” said Mr Nageshwar Rao, director, ISM Focal Point. “Fortunately, AP students prefer to join in universities located in northern region of Kyrgyzstan while the violence erupted in southern region,” he added. “We are in touch with all our students. They told us they are safe and are coming back as holidays were declared for all the educational institutions.”

According to Mr Rao, students from Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Delhi, Punjab and Bihar opt for universities located in south Kyrgyzstan and have been badly affected by the violence. Kyrgyzstan is a favourite destination for medical studies as the cost of education is less. Students need to spend just Rs 9 lakh to complete MBBS, which includes tuition fee, accommodation and food charges.

“We are sending students from almost all the districts,” said Mr Rao. “But majority are from Telangana districts such as Karimanagar, Warangal and Adilabad.” Though the practice of Indians studying medicine in erstwhile Russia started a few decades back the momentum has picked up in the last six years with new destinations such as China, Nepal and Belize emerging.

Majority of the students who reached Delhi on Thursday had to wind up their semester ahead of schedule, thanks to the ethnic strife. “We were not really affected by the clashes that took place away from the capital city,” said Ms Fathima, a student from Kakinada.

But other students who escaped to Bishkek from the troubled areas have either lost their passports and valid documents and are being taken care of by the embassy.