AP medical students stranded in Ukraine

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, June 29, 2012: Around 50 medical students belonging to various parts of Andhra Pradesh, who have been stranded in Ukraine for two days, now fear that they will lose an opportunity to appear for the Medical Council of India’s eligibility test.

The students, some from Visakhapatnam, had completed the six-year medical course at various varsities in Ukraine and were supposed to reach New Delhi on Thursday morning to submit their application to attend the MCI’s eligibility test in India.

The last date to submit the application is June 29. Any delay in submission will result in the loss of one year for all the students.

However, they are now stranded at Kiev airport after they were not allowed to board a Delhi-bound flight without any valid reasons by the AeroSvit airline company on Wednesday evening.

“We really don’t know the reasons why they were denied boarding passes. They promised to accommodate the students in other flights. But, unfortunately, no flight is a direct one other than the service booked by them. They will have to take a connecting flight at either Istanbul or Moscow, which will be too late for them to reach India and submit MCI application. They do not have proper internet facilities to scan their original certificates to apply online,” P. Veerabhadra Rao, whose son P.S.K.S. Praneeth is one of the stranded students, told this newspaper.

Mr Rao raised doubts about the accommodation provided by the airline, which promised a connecting flight to Moscow on Friday morning.

“Very bad accommodation has been provided by the airline and neither transportation nor food has been given to the stranded students. The airline staffers are not at all responsive since the passengers as young students,” said Mr Rao.

On Thursday, Mr Rao, who works as an assistant engineer at Military Engin-eering Services wrote to the external affairs ministry seeking its intervention to resolve the issue.