Reacting strongly to BJP MLAs protesting before Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha over what they termed the disproportionate selection of non-Hindu MBBS students in the newly established Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME) at Katra, several Kashmir-based political leaders on Sunday slammed the BJP’s move as a dangerous bid to polarise communities and “a recipe for disaster”.
Ruling National Conference MLA and party’s chief spokesman, Tanvir sadiq wrote on X; “When you communalise institutions, you aren’t just doing politics you are dividing society at its core”.
“If hospitals, schools, universities, and medical colleges start deciding intake on the basis of religion, what kind of country will we become? Tomorrow, will a patient be treated according to their faith? Will merit be pushed aside to satisfy majoritarian demands? This is a recipe for disaster”, Sadiq said.
“The BJP’s stance on the SMVDIME admissions where selections were purely merit-based is not just misguided, it is dangerous. A shrine-funded institution does not become a religion-based institution. Donations made in devotion cannot be converted into tools of discrimination”, he said.
“For your petty political gains, BJP, please do not turn our institutions into battlegrounds of faith. You are planting a time bomb that, once it goes off, will create a divide no one will ever be able to fix. Communalising health and education is fundamentally wrong. It harms society today and destroys the nation tomorrow. This toxic politics must stop before irreparable damage is done”, Sadiq added.
Peoples Conference President and MLA, Sajad Gani Lone characterised it as a “perilous attempt to communalise medical sciences”.
“This is too much of a stretch. The BJP is now experimenting with the concept of communalising medical sciences”, he said, urging a return to constitutional norms and academic integrity.
Emphasising that medical admissions operate under a uniform national framework, he noted that “there is a proper admission test called NEET. And that is an All India test”.
Lone observed that the political trivialisation of such a distinguished discipline constituted an affront to generations of scientists.
He maintained that India should be pursuing global prominence in medical research, rather than retreating into divisive rhetoric.
PDP leader Iltija Mufti wrote on X; “In Naya Kashmir, discrimination towards Muslims now also extends to education. The irony being that this anti-Muslim apartheid is being legitimised & carried out in India’s only Muslim majority state with its only Muslim Chief Minister. Shameful”.
A former education minister and PDP leader, Naeem Akhtar, said “The Muslim students have been selected through NEET and got the Mata Vaishnodevi Medical College”.