Around 13 lakh Indian students to feel the brunt of rupee depreciation: Cong

New Delhi, July 6

As the rupee falls against the dollar, crude oil imports is not the only sector which is going to be hurt but about 13 lakh students will be affected by the rising dollar rate. The Congress has now questioned the government on this.

As per reports and the official data 13,24,954 students are studying abroad with 4.65 lakh students in the US and 55,465 students in the UK. According to the Parliamentary reply of MoS V Muraleedharan, as per information received from the Bureau of Immigration (BoI), about 1,33,135 students have gone abroad this year while there were 4,44,553 students in 2021 and 2,59,655 in 2020.

The Congress has said that this year only the brunt is 6.2 percent while escalation has led to about a 15 percent hike for the students. The dollar rate is 79.14 as of today which was 74.5 on January 1.

Congress spokesperson Gaurav Vallabh said that, "without the increase of fees in foreign universities 13 lakh families have to suffer because of the rising rate of the dollar"

Vallabh asked: "What corrections, what measures is the government of India taking to stop this depreciation of rupee, because mind it, as rupee value depreciates viz-a-viz dollar, our oil bill, our oil prices automatically increase without any movement in the international prices."

"Our lakhs of students, who used to go abroad for higher studies, their tuition fees got increased by 10 to 15 per cent in the last 6 months, because they have to convert rupees to dollars, so earlier they were getting 1,000 dollars for Rs. 70,000, today, they have to pay Rs. 80,000. So, without doing anything in six months, my tuition fees bill for higher studies in other countries has increased by around 15-20 per cent," Vallabh said.