Ninety Students from Udampur met Dr Jitendra Singh. And a homecoming at Parul University, Vadodara

After the walkthrough of Lakshya 2047, Gujarat’s first NSDC Centre for Future Skills, and the demonstration at Pragya had concluded, Dr. Jitendra Singh walked into the seminar hall in the new building. Ninety students in traditional Jammu and Kashmir attire were waiting. All ninety were studying at Parul University, Vadodara. All ninety were from his Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency. The screen at the front of the hall carried a simple welcome: “Students of Udhampur Constituency warmly welcome Dr Jitendra Singh.”

What followed was not an interaction in the formal political sense. It was, by any honest measure, a homecoming. Conducted hundreds of kilometres from the homes the students had left to study, in a seminar hall in Gujarat, between a Union Minister and the young people of a region he represents, has served across three Lok Sabha terms, and continues to shape through policy and investment.

Parul University currently enrols 70,500 plus students across four campuses (Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, and Goa), including 6,000 plus international students from across the world. The geographic spread of the Indian student body is a structural fact rather than a marketing claim: students from Jammu and Kashmir, the North-East, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and every other state in the country choose Parul University for engineering, medicine, pharmacy, law, design, agriculture, and the broader programme portfolio. The Foundation Day account of Dr. Parul Patel and the NAAC A++ 3.55 trajectory provides the institutional history that explains the scale.

Students from J&K, the choice is based on many factors like program availability in engineering, medicine, and allied health disciplines that help in the development of the region on a priority basis. Another factor is cost: the fees in comparison to other private colleges and universities, on-campus stay and infrastructure that supports the students far from home, the community establishment of J&K students on campus, and skill certifications.

• Total students enrolled at Parul University: 70,500 and up.
• Campuses: four (Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Goa).
• On-campus residency: 27,000 students.
• International students: 6,000 plus across multiple nationalities.
• Udhampur constituency intake: at least ninety students present at the 8 May 2026 interaction, across multiple disciplines.

When Dr. Singh asked which of the students wanted to speak, a hand went up. Akshay Kumar rose. He had encountered Dr. Singh once before, at a children’s science festival in Udhampur during his school years. The memory had stayed with him. When word had reached him that Dr Singh would be visiting Parul University, what he felt was harder to describe than excitement.

Alag si excitement thi sir, mann mein. Jaise koi apne ghar se aaya ho mere milne. –Akshay Kumar, on hearing Dr Singh would visit Parul University

What he said next went beyond personal sentiment. It went to the operating layer of what infrastructure investment actually means when it reaches the lives of the people it is designed for.

Sir, excitement isliye bhi thi kyuki kabhi one on one mulakat nhi hui. Aur mai bahut rural area se aata hoon, aur aapki vajah se mera area aaj duniya aur bharat ke nakshe mein visible hai. Mere ghar tak road bhi aapki vajhe se pahunchi hai. – Akshay Kumar, student from Udhampur constituency

Policy speeches, press releases, and government reports describe what connectivity infrastructure investment does for rural communities. And then there is this: a young man from a rural area of Udhampur, standing in a seminar hall in Gujarat, telling the man who shaped that infrastructure investment that a road reached his home. The road is verifiable. The student is verifiable. The minister is verifiable. The structural relationship between policy and lived experience is, in this moment, observable.

Read More: Why International Students Choose Parul University?

Akshay Kumar had one question for Dr. Singh. What were you like in school? Dr Singh’s answer was immediate, simple, and exactly right for what the moment required.

Bilkul aapki tarah. – Dr. Jitendra Singh, in response

(Just like you.) And then, with a simplicity that landed with the weight of genuine counsel rather than the emptiness of a platitude:

Focus raho. Sab sahi hoga: jo bhi karoge. – Dr. Jitendra Singh, to Akshay Kumar

(Stay focused. Everything will be fine: whatever you do.) The phrase carried no slogan and no policy. It carried the considered economy of someone who has lived the trajectory the student in front of him is now beginning.

Another student stood. He had been in the fifth standard when Dr. Singh had visited Shivnagar, in Udhampur. The student had built a water-cycle model for a school exhibition. Dr. Singh had stopped at the exhibit. He had looked at the model. He had praised the work.

That praise, received as a child, from a figure whose national importance the student perhaps did not yet fully understand, had stayed with him into adulthood and into a university located more than two thousand kilometres south of the home he had left. Dr. Singh, when the student told the story, recalled the visit. He remembered going to Shivnagar in Udhampur.

Sabko meri umar kyun batani thi aapne? – Dr. Jitendra Singh, after the student’s school-day memory

(Why did you have to tell everyone my age?) The room laughed. And in the laughter, the distance between formal political address and family-style warmth disappeared.

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The students of the Udhampur constituency had prepared gifts for Dr. Singh and brought them to Vadodara for this occasion. Dr. Singh received each gift with the same quality of attention. For every student who came forward, he asked for the name, looked at what had been made, offered a genuine compliment, and extended personal best wishes for the student’s studies and future.

• Format: individual student presentation, named greeting, personalized acknowledgement.
• Cohort represented: ninety students from Udhampur in traditional attire.
• Highlight gift: a string-art portrait of Dr. Jitendra Singh, made by pinning thread through a board in rows until the image emerges.
• Minister’s commitment: to post the artwork and the students’ gifts on his Facebook page so a wider audience could see the work the students had made.

The assembly closed with a single act that became its most powerful expression. A student came forward holding chocolate barfi, a Kashmiri sweet that carries a particular significance in the region’s hospitality culture: the offering of something sweet to a guest is not refreshment, it is welcome made tangible.

Khand ke bina Kashmiri mehmaan-nawazi puri kahan hoti hai. – Student from Udhampur constituency, offering chocolate barfi

(Without sweets, Kashmiri hospitality is never complete.) Dr. Singh accepted the barfi. He broke it. He shared it with the students who surrounded him, with the university leadership accompanying him, and with the room. It was not an administrative act. It was a communal one.