The Indian Embassy will prepare a list of students and share with the Chinese side for their consideration

The Embassy of India in China on Friday said that the Chinese side has expressed its willingness to consider facilitating the return of Indian students to China on a need-assessed basis.

This follows the meeting of External Affairs Minister of India with the State Councillor and Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China, Wang Yi on March 25, 2022, said the Indian Embassy in China in a statement on Friday.

In order to facilitate this, the Indian Embassy intends to prepare a list of such students which will be shared with the Chinese side for their consideration.

Therefore Indian students are required to provide the necessary information by filling up the Google form at the link, latest by May 8.

Once the collated information is shared with the Chinese side, they would consult relevant Chinese departments to verify the list and indicate whether the identified students can travel to China to complete the course. This coordination process would be carried out in a time-bound manner.

The Chinese side has also conveyed that eligible students should unconditionally abide by the Covid-19 prevention measures, and agree to bear all expenses related to Covid-19 prevention measures by themselves.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday had said that it had not heard from the Chinese side on its request to look at the difficulties that students in India are facing for not being able to return to China to resume their studies.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told a weekly media briefing that the Indian side was concerned about the plight of the students, especially at a time when there were reports of students from other countries being allowed back into China.

It may be recalled that China had restricted travel by suspending visa and residence permits from March 27, 2020, in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the MEA, approximately 20,000 Indian students were enrolled in various courses including clinical medicine courses in different Chinese universities at that time.

A few days ago, group of medical students had launched an online petition seeking the facilitation of their return to China.