The Congress on Wednesday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for remaining “totally quiet” on Indian students being adversely affected by United States President Donald Trump’s action against foreign students.

“President Trump has made his intentions clear,” Congress’s communication in-charge Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X. “China has reacted strongly regarding Chinese students. But not surprisingly, our PM and EAM have kept totally quiet.”

Ramesh quoted data from the Ministry of External Affairs to note that approximately 3,37,630 Indian students went to the US in 2024 and highlighted that roughly a third of international students in the US are from India.

More than 1.1 million international students were enrolled in US universities in 2023-’24 academic year.

“This means that some three and a half lakh Indian families invested their hard-earned savings or borrowed for the education of their children in the US,” Ramesh said. “These students, plus those who went in earlier years, face an uncertain future. Large numbers of students planning to go in 2025 may never get to see their aspirations fulfilled.”

Ramesh’s remarks came in the backdrop of the Trump administration’s measures against international students through various means including screening their political views and indefinitely pausing all new student visa interviews on May 28, as it prepares to expand social media screening of applicants.

It was not yet clear what the new procedure to vet the social media of applicants will involve.

The State Department in March had also announced plans to use artificial intelligence to review international students’ social media accounts.

The Trump administration has also clashes with top US universities, including Harvard, which has been accused by the president of promoting left-wing views, enabling antisemitism on campus and supporting discriminatory admissions policies.

The US government has taken aggressive actions to try to enforce its demands, including freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in university funding, revoking visas and attempting to deport international students. However, many of these measures have been blocked by the courts.

Besides talking about Indian students, Ramesh also questioned Modi and Jaishankar’s silence on Trump’s repeated claims that Washington had brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan on May 10 following escalating military tensions between the two countries after the Indian military carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The strikes were in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which killed 26 persons on April 22.

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