The liaison officers appointed by the Jammu and Kashmir government have started their duties by visiting colleges and interacting with Kashmiri students and faculty members.
State Administrative Council of Jammu and Kashmir has appointed seven liaison officers in different cities, to coordinate with students of Jammu and Kashmir pursing higher education in different parts of the country. Veedushi Kapoor, Deputy Director with Kashmir Bureau of Information (KBI) has been appointed as liaison officer for Delhi-NCR including Meerut.
Collect data
The officer has started visiting colleges and collecting data regarding the total number of Jammu and Kashmir students enrolled in various higher education programmes.
“We will be reaching out to the Jammu and Kashmir students who are studying in Delhi-NCR for any kind of help they need. Even their parents can report any issues faced by their children studying in Delhi-NCR. We are putting up helpline number and contact number of the officer at every college. We will also be appointing counsellor in each college who will keep interacting with Jammu and Kashmir students regularly,” said an officer.
The liaison officer will send reports to J&K government for review, the officer added.
The officer added that soon they will be organising a meeting of all colleges in Greater Noida-Noida where they will be communicating to the college authorities about ‘help centres’ for Jammu and Kashmir students.
On December 8, Asim Hussain, a Kasmiri student who went missing from his college in Greater Noida was found in Mumbai. He is a first-year engineering student and was barred from appearing for semester exam due to short attendance. In such cases, the liaison officer coordinated with the police, parents and other agencies concerned to track the student at the earliest.
“The liaison officers will coordinate with various authorities concerned to ensure the well-being of students from Jammu and Kashmir,” said Dheeraj Gupta, Principal Resident Commissioner of Jammu and Kashmir government in New Delhi. The appointment of liaison officers was cleared during a meeting of State Administrative Council (SAC) following reports that Ehtisham Bilal Sofi, a student of Sharda University in Greater Noida, he had allegedly joined a militant group Islamic State Jammu & Kashmir (ISJK).
