Collaborating With Punjab Universities - UK

12 Sep 2013

David Lelliott, British Deputy High Commissioner to India, said that his country aspires to see more of Indian students. He told Times of India that the UK is taking a look at a range of collaborations with Punjab Universities.

Lelliott said the commission was in talks with institutions like Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev University. He visited the university along with a delegation of British and Indian students, to tie up for student exchange programs and collaborative projects.

He said that just as they love seeing British students spending time in India, they would like to see more of Indian students coming to the UK. Lelliott also said that the UK was open to collaborations with Punjab and business tie-ups with India on clean energy programs.

On the UK's strict visa norms that led to a decline in the number of Indian students migrating to Britain, the diplomat said the ‘visa bond’ scheme only aims to target ‘illegal immigrants’. Lelliott said that the visa bond is a pilot project that administers to only a small proportion of students migrating to the UK. He insisted that it is only to investigate high risk visitors and not meant to dampen the Indian student population. He also added that a majority of visitors - the ‘right’ student population - would not have to pay the bond.

On his third visit to Punjab University, Lelliott also delivered a talk to an audience of British and Indian students on business prospects in UK. The deputy high commission office in Chandigarh caters to the Punjab, UT, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.

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