Warns of ‘designed push into darkness’
SRINAGAR: Er. Ehtisham Khan,a social and student rights activist and Co-founder of The Purpose (NGO), has raised serious alarm over the latest revised qualifying percentiles for postgraduate medical admissions, calling them a stark indicator of the systematic erosion of merit and academic standards in Jammu and Kashmir.
Referring to the officially notified figures, Er. Khan said the numbers leave little room for ambiguity. With open merit candidates required to meet a qualifying score equivalent to the 7th percentile, while others qualify at or near zero percentile, the imbalance is no longer defensible as social justice.
“This is no longer a debate about inclusion versus exclusion,” Er. Khan said in a statement issued here. “It is about the systematic erosion of standards and the quiet normalisation of mediocrity. When benchmarks are repeatedly lowered instead of capacity being raised, the system does not become inclusive—it collapses.”
He clarified that the circular itself has not been issued by the elected government of Jammu and Kashmir. However, he held the government accountable for failing to act on its repeated pre-election commitments to rationalise the reservation framework and restore balance.
“The present dispensation promised correction and fairness,” he said. “What the youth have received instead is delay after delay, reassurance without resolution, and a deliberate attempt to buy time while opportunities continue to slip away.”
Er. Khan emphasised that the damage being caused is not abstract or theoretical.“Lost opportunities are not statistical losses; they are real, irreversible, and deeply personal,” he said. “You cannot compensate a generation retrospectively. A student who lost a seat two years ago cannot be handed justice today. What is gone is gone.”
He warned that over the past two years alone, thousands of academic seats and professional positions have already been filled under the same uncorrected framework, permanently excluding deserving candidates from open merit.
“This is how futures are dismantled—not overnight, but through a designed push into darkness,” he said. “Each year of inaction deepens the damage and makes reform harder, not easier.”
Taking a strong view of the government’s approach, Er. Khan said optimism without action has become a substitute for governance.“Optimism without action is not governance; it is evasion,” he remarked. “Committees, consultations, and ritualistic protests once a year cannot be sold as solutions while the clock keeps ticking against the youth.”
He added that Jammu and Kashmir, with its limited institutional bandwidth and fragile professional ecosystem, cannot afford sustained dilution of merit without long-term consequences.“If this trajectory continues, our medical and academic institutions risk becoming hollowed out from within,” he cautioned. “Standards, once compromised, are not easily restored.”
Concluding, Er. Khan said the youth of Jammu and Kashmir are no longer asking for sympathy or symbolic gestures.
“They do not need reassurances, committees, or deferred timelines,” he said. “They need a real-time solution—now, not six months or a year from today. Justice delayed here is not merely denied; it permanently destroys futures.