Concerned about their students, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay has decided to allow its students from Afghanistan to come and stay in the hostel keeping in mind the deteriorating situation in the country. The Taliban has taken over power in the country with the United States withdrawing, while the President, Ashraf Ghani has left the Capital.

The students are at present part of the ongoing online classes. These students who are from IIT Bombay had gone home because of the ongoing second wave of Covid-19 pandemic. Now, as the situation in Afghanistan has taken a turn for the worse, these students had requested the IIT Bombay authorities to allow them to come over to India and stay in the hostel.

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Based on humanitarian consideration, this request has been approved by the institution.

Making public this decision, the Institute Subhasis Chaudhuri posted about it on Facebook. He said: "We offered admission to quite a few students from Afghanistan in the Masters program this year under scholarships from ICCR. Because of online instructions, they were participating in the class from home."

Sharing more details about this crucial decision, he added: "However, due to rapidly deteriorating conditions in their homeland, they wanted to come out of their country and join the hostels in the campus. Although we have approved their request to come to the campus as a special case, we are not sure how late it is for them to pursue their dreams. We hope that they are all safe and can join us soon."

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In the current academic year, the institution has admitted nine Afghan students and they are all pursuing M-Tech programme. All of them have been attending the online classes and lectures because of the prevailing Coronavirus situation.

All these students are Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) scholarship holders.