File picture of Afghan students at Bhubaneswar railway station

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 29: Afghan students may become a rare sight on the Ravenshaw University campus — or worse, disappear altogether — if the authorities have their way.

The Cuttack-based university has decided against admitting students from Afghanistan from the next academic session. This could be a possible fall-out of the campus scraps involving students from Afghanistan.

“We have made a conscious decision not to admit any more Afghan students because of past experience. We would consider applications only from African or European students,” said Laxmikanta Mishra, reader in history, who is in-charge of international students at the university.

The decision is being viewed in the backdrop of a major clash between Afghan and local students at Ravenshaw in January 2011 after which 59 students from that country had decided to quit the university. However, they returned to Cuttack following intervention of the Odisha government, officials of the Afghan embassy and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), which had facilitated their education at the prestigious university.

The first batch of Afghan students, numbering around 70, landed at the university in 2009, courtesy an ICCR exchange programme. University officials said while 14 Afghans returned home in 2011 with a post-graduation degree, in the subsequent year nearly 60 other students went back.

This year has been exceptionally bad for Ravenshaw in terms of enrolment of foreign students. Only five from abroad have taken admissions here, the number of Afghans having plunged to just one. Sources said two other Afghans, who had failed to clear their exams, were still at the university.

“They had problems adjusting to the place and communicating in English. The academic standard of majority of students was also below par. Besides, they did not have the best of relations with local students. The misunderstandings between them led to a major brawl on campus, which landed the authorities in trouble,” Mishra added.

Another university official said accommodation was another important factor contributing to the decline in the number of Afghan students on the campus. These students had been putting up in the West Hostel, which was initially designed to house MBA and international students.

“But following a high court order to allot that hostel to girl students, they had to be relocated to another hostel, which lacked high-class facilities. We were not in a position to take proper care of them. So, we didn’t try hard enough to get foreign students this time,” said the official.

However, regional ICCR director Meenakshi Mishra said the 2011 campus brawl involving Afghan students had nothing to do with the low admission rate of foreign students at Ravenshaw.

“The admissions depend on the number of applications received in a year by the ICCR headquarters in New Delhi. This year, we have sent 17 Afghans to National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. They never had any problems at Ravenshaw. Rather, they were happy there,” she said.

Educationists feel the university authorities’ decision not to admit Afghan students might strain the country’s bilateral relations with Afghanistan.

“This will paint a negative picture not just of Ravenshaw, but India. Afghan students constitute the majority of international students in the state, which now runs the risk of earning the tag of a hostile, inhospitable place. It won’t be surprising if students from that country stop coming here altogether in the coming years,” said a professor of a reputed institute in Bhubaneswar.

The Afghan students were not available for comment.