Foreign born children of Indian Origin living in India should be allowed to appear in JEE Mains

I am writing to you in a plea for help, on behalf of all those hundreds and thousands of foreign-born kids who relocated back to India with their parents, in regards to a recent (2014) decision by Indian Ministry of Education, which disallows children of Indian origin born outside India, from taking part (as in applying and sitting in entrance test) in one of the mainstream and mandatory Engineering Entrance Exams of the country – JEE Mains which is mandatory for JEE Advanced.

“Foreign, Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) and Person of Indian Origin (PIO) category students are not eligible for admission to NITs, IIITs and other centrally-funded institutions through JEE (Main). They can only be admitted through the Direct Admission to Students Abroad (DASA) channel using their SAT 2 scores. But, admission to IITs is only through JEE (Advanced), which requires the students to figure among the top 1.5 lakh candidates in JEE (Main).”

Please see below links and articles and how it has already impacted the future of so many talented and hard-working kids who put in 4 years of hard work already when this decision was announced.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/IITs-out-of-bounds-for-students-born-abroad/articleshow/45508987.cms

Page 17 of 59 (Nationality section)

http://jeemain.nic.in/webinfo/pdf/JEE_Main_Bulletin%202015.pdf

What is ironic is that in all the IITs, the policy is open for foreign kids to apply for Postgraduate and Research Programs but they keep them out of Undergraduate programs.

Even if people of Indian origin wanted to return to India, not having a fair shot at entrance tests for country’s most prestigious institutes will cause people to stay in Foreign lands where there is no such discrimination when it comes to application process and entrance tests. The brain drain can never be reversed if such policies are in place.

We have seen and totally understand that there might be different fee structure or extra set of language exams for resident versus foreign kids in the colleges and universities all over the world but debarring foreign born children from applying to the mandatory entrance test, just because their parents were outside India when they were born is like punishing a child for no fault of his own.

Please change this rule for which I am sure all overseas citizens of India will forever be indebted to the Ministry of Education in India - the Indians who went abroad for high studies, better job experience, better business opportunities will have a chance to return to India equipped with their unique perspective, rich experiences and make a difference by contributing to the advancement and prosperity of India.

I believe that academic performance based exchange of children of Indian origin for undergraduate studies in either country (US or India) will only result in connecting young Indians, give them better exposure and make them emerge as strong as ever.

With the hopes that policy makers understand the children’s predicament and this discriminatory rule changes soon giving them a fair chance at quality education in a country where their parents decided to work.

Thanks and best regards,

Sincerely yours,

Kavita Jain