USA and sucurity - Getting tough on India - Curt Lewis

19 US-bound Indian students stopped from boarding flight to join blacklisted universities

India's national carrier Air India barred 19 Indian students from boarding its flight from Hyderabad to San Francisco on Sunday night, after US authorities informed the airlines that the universities they had got admission in were blacklisted. However, the two Californian universities in question have denied these charges.

Air India justified its action by stating that the US Customs and Border Protection agency had communicated that two universities - Silicon Valley University in San Jose and North Western Polytechnic College in Fremont - were both were under scrutiny and that students heading to these Californian universities were not allowed to enter the country.

This wasn't an isolated incident. Last week, there were reports of 14 Indian students heading to the same universities being deported from the US after being detained and questioned by the FBI for around 15 hours in San Franscisco. A third group of students also said that they were detained for three days in the US, before being deported.

Air India has offered to refund the tickets of these students and issued a notice to its travel agents asking them not to issue tickets to students travelling to these two Californian universities. It said that this is a "precautionary" measure to avoid "inconvenience" to students.

"Students travel on a one-way ticket to US and in the event of deportation, the student incurs huge expenditure to buy a ticket back to India on first available service. Further, seats are often not available on any airlines to travel back," Air India said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the two universities have issued statements that they had not been blacklisted and dismissed these reports as "rumours". They added that there were stricter screening procedures being applied to all travellers heading to the US after the Paris attacks, and not just students of these two universities.

"Due to the recent attack in Paris, stricter customs screening measures are being applied to all travelers to the U.S. Therefore, NPU strongly urges that you please make sure to bring with you all necessary original documentation in order to make your customs screening as smooth as possible," the Northwestern Polytechnic University said in a statement.

India's External Affairs ministry said that it has taken up the matter with thte US government and hopes to resolve it soon. Approximately 1.3 million students travelled to the US for higher education in 2014-15.