Indians going for foreign education jump to 5-year high in 2022: report

New Delhi: Students going abroad for education showed significant spike in 2022 exceeding numbers over the pre-pandemic period, says data from Bureau of Immigration (Bol).

The BoI, which functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), said as per report in The Hindu nearly 6.5 lakh students have flown out of India on student visa this year.

The BoI keeps data on travel abroad based on passengers' verbal disclosure or the type of visa they produced for immigration clearance.

Until November 30, as many as 6, 48, 678 students left Indian on student visas hitting five-year high.

But Indians traveling abroad for business, employment, medical, pilgrimage, and others remained lower than the pre-pandemic period, the report said.

Leaving India on visiting visas reported significant increase in 2022.

Between January and November 30, 1.83 crore Indians travelled to other countries.

A further breakup of the numbers showed that 72.49 lakh of them went for residency, 30.85 lakh went on tourist visas, and 40.92 lakh obtained visiting visas.

Interestingly, number of Indian traveling abroad has shot up by over 137% compared to 2021.

When it comes to travel destinations, more Indians chose to travel to countries including UK and Canada in 2022 compared to pre-pandemic period.

Where 6.17 lakh Indians reached in Canada in 2019, it rose to 6.60 lakh in this year, and those travelled to UK went from 7.45 lakh in 2019 to 7.54 lakh in 2022.