Afghan national Abdul Musawer secured his BA in political science from Delhi University in summer this year and got enrolled in the master’s programme for journalism.

Now the 21-year-old drives an Uber cab on Delhi’s streets, his hopes of higher education dashed. He feels “cheated”.

Musawer had to leave the MA course, unable to deposit the yearly tuition fee of Rs 140,000, after the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) suddenly backtracked on its offer of a scholarship to a whole class of students like him.

The ICCR provides scholarships to foreign students enrolled in Indian institutions. Normally, a foreign student applies for the scholarship through the Indian mission in their country after securing enrolment in India. Then, after completing their undergraduate course — by when their student visa too would have expired — foreign students return home. If they secure MA enrolment in India, they apply afresh for the scholarship from their home country.

However, after the Taliban capture of Afghanistan in August last year, many Afghan students were stranded in India after completing their programmes, living officially as refugees on a stay visa. In October 2021, the ICCR announced that it would relax its rules and allow Afghan students staying in India — whatever their visa status — to apply for the scholarship if they secured a seat at an Indian institution.

This, in effect, made Afghan refugees eligible to apply for the scholarship. Under the scholarship scheme, the ICCR pays a student’s tuition fees and hostel rent apart from giving them a monthly stipend, which is around Rs 20,000-22,000 depending on the programme.

Musawer applied for the scholarship in July. He received an email in September saying his application had been approved. But when he went to the ICCR to collect the document of approval that he needed to submit to Delhi University, he was asked to wait till the classes started in November-December. “I again went to the ICCR in November. They said my application had been rejected because the ICCR had decided not to give scholarships to Afghan refugees,” he said.

The Telegraph has seen the email from the ICCR to Musawer that communicated the about-turn in policy. “They made me wait four months. They created hope in me for higher studies. I feel cheated,” Musawer said.

To support his family, Musawer has become an Uber driver. Scores of other young Afghans, living as refugees in India after their student visa expired, too have been left in the lurch by the ICCR’s change of heart on scholarships for refugee applicants.

Musawer’s family has been living in India as refugees for the past 11 years, surviving by selling dry fruits. He was therefore not eligible for the ICCR scholarship before October 2021.

He completed his BA course with two scholarships, one from the UNHCR — the UN’s refugee agency — and another from a German organisation. But these two scholarships only cover undergraduate programmes.

Afghan refugees are not the only complainants against the ICCR’s decisions relating to scholarships. Prabha Devi Jha, a student from Mauritius who is doing her PhD in Hindi from Visva-Bharati, was granted the ICCR’s African Scholarship from November 2019, following her enrolment.

She was allowed to leave the campus from January 28, 2020, till March 30, 2020, for fieldwork in Mauritius. Under the rules, a student can go abroad for field study for a maximum of two months.

However, the pandemic and the stoppage of flights meant Prabha Devi had to pursue her studies from Mauritius with the permission of the university. She returned to the campus in April 2022 after flights resumed.

But her stipend of Rs 22,000 had stopped after June 2020. Her university dues, which the scholarship would have covered, remain unpaid. Prabha Devi, who has submitted her thesis, wrote to the ICCR to clear the university dues and her stipend.

The reply from ICCR’s Calcutta office asked her to instead refund a sum of Rs 96,000 paid to her as stipend, saying it considered her long stay in Mauritius a violation of rules.

Prabha Devi says the three months’ stipend paid after March 2020, till when she had permission to stay in Mauritius, came to Rs 66,000. She has sought a clarification.

“There’s no way she could have returned to India during the pandemic. The two-month rule should not apply in this case,” a relative of the student said, seeking anonymity.

“While students take five to six years to complete their PhD, she completed it in three years. Still the ICCR is not providing the stipend and the dues.”

Leading foreign universities like Harvard did not discontinue their stipends to international scholars during the pandemic, when most of them had returned home.

An email sent to ICCR president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe on December 28, seeking the council’s perspectives on the complaints of Musawer and Prabha Devi, has so far brought no response.