Hindu Groups Mobilise as SMVDU MBBS Admissions Ignite Communal Fault Line | Kashmir Life

SRINAGAR: A fresh communal divide is taking shape in Jammu and Kashmir after the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence at Kakryal, Katra admitted 42 Muslim students in its maiden MBBS batch of 50. The selections, made strictly on NEET merit, have triggered an escalating confrontation across the Jammu region, with more than sixty organisations backed by the Sangh Parivar forming a united front to demand that the admissions be scrapped.

The newly constituted body, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Sangharsh Samiti, has been formed under the aegis of the Shri Sanatan Dharam Sabha. Its organisational model mirrors the 2008 Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti, whose agitation over the revocation of forest land transfer to the Amarnath shrine brought Jammu to a virtual halt for weeks.

The Samiti was announced at a meeting held at Geeta Bhawan, chaired by Sanatan Dharam Sabha president Purushottam Dadhichi, and attended by around sixty social, business and religious groups. Retired Colonel Sukhbir Singh Mankotia has been appointed its convenor. Dadhichi said the meeting was called in response to “widespread opposition” after candidates from a “single particular community” occupied the overwhelming majority of seats in the college’s first batch. He said the groups had unanimously agreed that “a struggle was necessary for a lasting solution”.

The immediate demand from the Samiti and several Hindu organisations is that the admission process be cancelled and the seats reserved exclusively for Hindu students, arguing that the institution has been built from the offerings of Hindu devotees of the Vaishno Devi shrine. Mankotia, speaking to The Tribune, said the college must be run “only as per the principles of Hindu religion” and that no student from “other communities” should be admitted. While asserting that their religion did not promote hatred, he argued that the Muslim students already selected should be “adjusted in other government colleges” across Jammu and Kashmir.

The Lt Governor, Manoj Sinha, who chairs the Shrine Board, has been approached by the Samiti and also by a delegation of the BJP. On Saturday evening, Leader of Opposition Sunil Sharma met the LG along with other BJP MLAs, conveying strong reservations from the party and its supporters. Sharma said the high number of non-Hindu admissions had caused “distress among devotees”, and that public sentiment attached cultural and faith-linked expectations to the shrine-funded medical institution.

The dispute intensified earlier in the week when members of the Yuva Rajput Sabha, Rashtriya Bajrang Dal and Movement Kalki marched to the university campus and forced open a gate before being stopped by police. Protest leaders said only seven Hindus and one Sikh had been admitted, calling the distribution unacceptable. Rashtriya Bajrang Dal president Rakesh Bajrangi accused the administration of ignoring the sentiments of Hindu pilgrims whose donations funded the institution. He demanded a fresh admission process and amendments to governing laws to guarantee reservations for Hindus.

The BJP’s position was later publicly articulated by its Udhampur MLA, RS Pathania, who posted that institutions built through the “devotion and offerings” of Vaishno Devi pilgrims must function in alignment with the shrine’s “sacred ethos”. He suggested amendments to the Shrine Board Act and the University Act.

Officials of the medical institute, however, maintained that admissions were purely merit-based under the uniform NEET framework, and stressed that SMVDIME is not a minority institution and therefore cannot apply religion-linked reservation of any kind.

As the agitation gathered force in Jammu, political parties in Kashmir sharply criticised the demand for Hindu-only admissions. National Conference MLA and chief spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq, in a post on X, said communalising educational institutions was “a recipe for disaster”. He asked whether patients would next be treated on the basis of faith and warned that turning donations into “tools of discrimination” would create a divide “no one will ever be able to fix”.

PDP leader Iltija Mufti said the episode reflected discrimination “now extending to education” in what she described as India’s only Muslim-majority state with its only Muslim Chief Minister. People’s Conference president Sajad Gani Lone called it a dangerous attempt to “communalise medical sciences”, pointing out that NEET is a national-level merit-based test.

With the newly formed Samiti warning of a region-wide agitation and the BJP formally objecting to the admissions, the controversy has moved rapidly from protest to political confrontation. What began as a dispute over one medical college’s merit list is now emerging as a significant new flashpoint in Jammu and Kashmir’s already sensitive communal landscape.