Indian students always welcome: UK minister

Chandigarh, Feb 16: Indian students are "always welcome" in his country, said British Minister Pat McFadden on Tuesday, Feb 16.

Speaking to reporters here, McFadden said, "Students from India are always welcome in the UK. In fact, the UK universities are always very keen to get Indian students who are very talented."

Presently, nearly 50,000 Indian students are studying in the UK," said McFadden, business, innovation and skills minister.

"We had to suspend our operations of processing student visa applications due to a huge surge in the number of applications for the lower level course," he said

"However, we have decided to resume the operations for the higher level courses, including university and undergraduate degree courses, from Mar," he added.

The UK Border Agency had temporarily stopped accepting student visa application from Feb 1 at its three centres in north India.

"We certainly want to continue our education ties with India but at the same time we want to protect the rights of genuine students. We want to make sure that we are following a proper procedure after the scrutiny," McFadden added.

OneIndia News