Apathy: Educational consultancies make hay in absence of govt guidelines
Srinagar: Despite a widespread public outcry against consultancies for duping students under the garb of providing admissions in colleges outside J&K state, the J&K government is delaying the registration of the educational consultancies functioning across the Valley.
The delay on part of the administration has encouraged the malpractice by these consultants who allegedly dupe the students under the garb of providing admission to them outside J&K state or abroad.
With no check from the competent authorities, the business of the consultants is yet to be streamlined in the valley particularly of those coming who are operating from outside the state but are on the lookout for students hailing from Kashmir.
Over the years, the consultants coming from outside states set up their canopies in hotel rooms and offer admissions to the valley students in outside colleges which later turn out to be a fraud forcing students to return back dejected and wasting the hard earned money of their parents.
“The government is deliberately delaying the registration of the consultancies in Kashmir as there are influential people involved in the business. Some of the officers are hand in glove with the consultant business,” an official said.
There has been a growing demand to have a proper mechanism for registration of career education consultancies through a regulatory authority.
“Local administration has a role to play in it. The district administration should set up norms and rules for the outside as well as local consultants who run their consultancies in various parts of the valley,” said Muhammad Altaf, a local resident of Srinagar.
Without following any rules, the outside consultants set up their offices for three to four days in hotel rooms and also run admission fairs in city and other districts to lure students for admissions in low grade colleges.
Pertinently, around 17 cases have been registered with the crime branch of the police about duping of students by outside consultancies in Kashmir.
An official in Crime Branch said these consultants have fraudulently siphoned money from valley based students who wanted to pursue their professional courses outside J&K state and other gulf countries.
“Government should come out with regulations for local consultants and press for registration of all consultancies which are functional in the Valley. It will put a check on these consultants and frauds will be controlled,” said a proprietor of one of the consultancy wishing not to be identified.
He said conditions should be set for outside state consultants to run their consultancies in Valley during admission season.
Over the years, there is no end to the complaints from parents and students as there are no regulations set by the government for these consultancies.
Divisional Commissioner Kashmir Baseer Khan was not available for his comments.
KV Correspondent
