Hundreds of youth and their relatives camped in the complex housing the British visa application centre of Chandigarh for the last two nights, seeking to beat the Oct 1 deadline when the changes in guidelines for student visas come into force.
Presently, applicants may just keep the maintenance money in their bank accounts for a day before submitting the bank statements with their applications. However, according to the new guidelines, coming into force from Thursday, this amount will have to be kept in the accounts for at least 28 days.
Long queues of young boys and girls, many of them accompanied by their parents from towns and villages of Punjab and Haryana, were seen outside the Visa Facilitation Services (VFS) centre for UK located here, which opened Tuesday after two holidays (Sunday and Monday).
Most of the aspirants, accompanied by relatives, had made the corridors of the busy Sector 8 commercial centre – where the VFS centre is – their temporary home, sleeping on the floor on bed-sheets spread outside the showrooms since the last two days.
Some people are sitting outside the visa application centre since yesterday (Monday) morning and they have not slept the whole night. They shocked to see this heavy rush and they decided to wait for tomorrow before his turn comes.
The present processing fees for student visa to Britain is Rs.12,350 and the official maintained they have not got any communication regarding an increase in this fee so far.
Terrible 🙁 I hate this.