Kerala - Kozhikode

Plea to restore DASA scheme

Kozhikode: The United Arab Emirates-based Pravasi Bandhu Trust has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to restore the Direct Admission of Students Abroad (DASA) facility at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) for the benefit of hundreds of Non-Resident Indian (NRI) students who qualify the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).

In a memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister, trust chairman K.V. Shamsudeen said that NRI students had been given admission to IITs under the DASA scheme. But the scheme was stopped two years ago. Then the students were required to qualify the SAT, which was the criterion for admission for universities of excellence in the United States and other English-speaking countries. The students were required to pay $ 6,000 per semester as tuition fee in addition to miscellaneous fees, he said.

The memorandum was also forwarded to Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh, Union Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi; Indian Ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Sultanate of Oman and Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan.

Mr. Shamsudeen said the DASA scheme had been introduced to attract talented Indian students to India and make facilities for their studies at the IITs instead of them seeking admission in universities abroad. Another reason cited was that with the high fees obtained from the students, the IITs could be upgraded.

He said that overseas Indian students did not get proper coaching facilities for IIT admissions in foreign countries unlike the students in India. This placed the NRIs at a disadvantage during the Joint Entrance Examinations, he said.

He pointed out that many NRI students who had earlier availed of the DASA quota had come out with flying colours from IITs. This revealed that these students did not lag behind in scholastic excellence although they had been given admission at the IIT through the backdoor. The SAT was also the criterion applied by U.S. universities to attract most of the IITians for higher studies.

The DASA is administered by Educational Consultants India Limited, a public sector enterprise set up under the Union Ministry of Education in 1981. At the same time, the DASA scheme for NRI students still existed at the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and five other top engineering colleges in the country.

But for reasons unknown, the admission to IITs through DASA quota was discontinued two years ago. As the DASA quota is still continuing for NITs and other colleges, there is no justification for denying the same for IITs.

The trust demanded that the Centre take a decision favouring the NRI students in this regard.

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