The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Fake papers doom UK student visa applicants

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 28, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Fake papers doom UK student visa applicants

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, AUG. 27. The number of visa applications rejected because of forged documents has shown a slight increase this year, the British Deputy High Commission here said.

In July alone, 30 per cent of the student visa applications were turned down because of forged documents.

Although there were not many cases of fake passports, documents found forged included bank statements, property documents or statements from the auditors.

Hyderabad had the dubious distinction of having the most applications with forged papers, said Lesley Scen, office manager, Visa Section, British Deputy High Commission.

There has also been a 30 per cent increase in the number of student visa applications from South India. It may be noted that south India sends 37 per cent of the total number of Indian students to Britain.

In 2003-04, 13,700 students went to the U.K. for higher studies, of whom nearly 5,000 were from the south.

British Deputy High Commissioner Stuart Innes hosted a reception for the students leaving for Britain on Wednesday. Several of them had won scholarships, including Chevening, Commonwealth and Charles Wallace India Trust awards.

The top subjects chosen were environment management, integrative bioscience, marine technology, military vehicle technology, medical microbiology, embedded systems and robotics, social anthropology and water engineering.

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