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Student's Swiss sojourn hangs in the balance

Started by rajoe, Apr 25, 2009, 09:34 AM

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rajoe

Student's Swiss sojourn hangs in the balance

Joshua Soans, a third year IIT-Madras student (of the 5-year integrated masters programme in humanities), was awarded the Swiss university's Wings of Excellence Award for his essay `Unshackling the invisible hand'. However, Joshua's passport expired in July 2008. When he learned he was invited for the symposium, he applied for a new passport under tatkal.

"We should have got it in 3-10 days. But it's been nearly two weeks and we still haven't got the passport," his father Anup Soans said. "The regional passport officer assured me it would be issued by April 20. The event is on May 7-9 and he has to leave on May 3. The delay in issue of passport means delay in visa, which may take at least four days. We have very little time left. Is this the way one encourages merit?" Anup asked.

He added that all requisite documents have been submitted to the passport office. "When I checked status of the application on the website, it showed green. So we assumed everything was fine."

When contacted, regional passport officer Ravindra R said the verification certificate submitted by the applicant is computer-generated, which is against the rules. "It should be issued on the letterhead of the verifying authority recommending the applicant. Since he said it was urgent, we accepted the application and sent it to the verification issuing authority for confirmation. We have not received any confirmation. The authority has not seen the applicant. We have brought this to the notice of the applicant and he has admitted it. The passport will be issued after we get confirmation from the verifying authority

source:TOI