Bathinda: Ninety immigration consultants, IELTS centres and ticketing agencies have been found running against the rules in Bathinda district.
These facts came to light in joint searches by police and revenue department teams. In all, 74 centres have been found running without a licence and 16 were found to be running in an unauthorised manner, as no intimation had been given to the local deputy commissioner’s office for opening a branch in the district.
The district administration has written to the police to take action against the unauthorised centres under the Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act, 2012, and the Punjab Travel Professional Regulation Rules, 2014.
Bathinda deputy commissioner (DC) Showkat Ahmad Parray said 90 centres had been found working illegally in the district. The FIRs have been registered against five such centres so far. He asked people to first verify the antecedents of such centres before availing their services.
Going by the large number of students going abroad on study visas, mainly to Canada, IELTS and immigration centres have been established across cities and small towns of the state. In the past many students in Canada had found their offer letters for admissions to various colleges to be fake. They had held protests at Mississauga near Toronto for a long time.
