Was the institution unfit, or was its merit-based outcome inconvenient? The episode signals a dangerous communalisation of educational access in India.
Dr Rameez Ahmad
The recent derecognition of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME) and the withdrawal of its permission to offer MBBS courses in Jammu and Kashmir is more than a regulatory setback. What is being framed as a compliance concern masks a deeper truth: the politicisation and communalisation of education, and the systematic marginalisation of minority students from access to quality professional opportunities.
On January 6–7, 2026, the National Medical Commission (NMC) revoked the Letter of Permission for the college’s 50-seat MBBS programme, citing serious deficiencies identified during a surprise inspection. Students already admitted were asked to relocate, their futures abruptly disrupted. Officially, the issue was compliance. Unofficially, the sequence of events tells another story.
We are told the institution was suddenly declared “unfit”. One is compelled to ask: Was this unfitness discovered overnight? Was the Commission asleep through planning, approvals, inspections, and admissions- only to awaken when exclusion became politically convenient? Regulatory vigilance that aligns so precisely with ideological pressure raises uncomfortable questions about neutrality, consistency, and institutional credibility.
The controversy erupted only after the first merit list revealed an inconvenient fact: a large majority of seats had been secured by Muslim students purely on the basis of NEET merit. This was neither illegal nor unprecedented. Yet it provoked an intense backlash, including public demands that admissions be determined by religious identity rather than academic performance. What followed was not a debate on educational quality, but a campaign of identity politics- one that education could not survive.
Political responses across Jammu and Kashmir revealed a rare convergence of concern. The Chief Minister emphasised that admissions were conducted strictly through NEET, where religion has no place, and questioned the logic of invoking merit-based systems only until their outcomes become inconvenient. Other leaders echoed this unease, cautioning that the communalisation of education risks turning institutions of learning into spaces of exclusion, alienating young minds and weakening the constitutional promise that merit- not identity- should determine access to professional education.
Even if one were to assume, for argument’s sake, that the college suffered from infrastructural or procedural shortcomings, how does that justify the communal hostility that accompanied the protests? The public branding of minority students through dangerous stereotypes and the weaponisation of religious symbolism in the context of educational access carried consequences far beyond this institution. Such rhetoric is not merely offensive; it is socially incendiary- a slow-burning communal poison that fractures trust, normalises exclusion, and inflicts damage far more serious than any single administrative decision.
Crucially, this narrative also clashes with testimonies from those directly involved. Several parents of selected students stated that the college’s infrastructure was superior to that of many existing medical colleges in the region. Students spoke of well-equipped laboratories, functional libraries, ample clinical material, and unusually favourable academic conditions. Several other students openly reported in the media outlets such as Rising Kashmir that multiple cadavers were available for dissection, allowing for individual academic attention- an advantage many established institutions struggle to provide.
Perhaps most telling are the accounts of faculty response. One selected student from north Kashmir recalled that professors were deeply supportive and visibly distressed by the closure. Some reportedly wept, openly lamenting the politicisation and communalisation of education, and expressing concern over the students’ suddenly uncertain futures. These are not reactions one associates with an institution on the verge of academic collapse.
If deficiencies were truly grave, why were they not identified earlier? And if regulatory norms are so uncompromising, why does similar scrutiny not follow a uniform pattern across newly established medical colleges nationwide? Selective regulation corrodes public trust, transforming oversight bodies from impartial watchdogs into instruments that appear responsive to political noise rather than academic reality.
This episode signals a dangerous shift. When minority students succeed on merit, the rules themselves are questioned; when they fail, merit is celebrated. Such contradictions reveal that the real discomfort lies not in infrastructure gaps, but in who occupies spaces of excellence. As one student perceptively noted, when some find themselves unable to compete, they do not improve performance- they seek to cancel competition altogether.
Education, particularly professional education, has historically served as a ladder for social mobility and national integration. To dismantle that ladder because it carries the “wrong” identities upward is to hollow out the very idea of equal citizenship. Democracy does not always collapse in dramatic ruptures; more often, it fades quietly- through files, inspections, and closures that appear procedural but are deeply political.
The constitutional ideals of the Republic, Socialist, Democratic, and Secular remain etched in ink. But when education is filtered through ideology and regulated through bias, these principles risk becoming decorative slogans- impressive in language, yet painfully absent in practice.
If India genuinely aspires to become a Viksit Bharat, development cannot be measured merely in highways, technology, or economic indices. A society that normalises communal hate-mongering, exclusion, and suspicion cannot sustain long-term peace or progress. Unchecked social polarisation risks pushing the nation, by 2047, toward perpetual internal conflict rather than collective development. No country can be truly developed if its educational institutions become battlegrounds of identity instead of nurseries of merit.
The closure of this medical college is therefore not merely a local controversy; it is a national warning. It forces us to confront unsettling questions: Is merit still merit if it belongs to the wrong community? Are educational rights conditional on identity? And will our institutions defend constitutional equality, or surrender to pressures that undermine it?
If we fail to answer these questions honestly, we risk turning a republic founded on equality before the law into one where merit – stripped of the “right” identity – becomes a crime.
ra*********@***il.com