New twist to Vaishno Devi college admission row: NC challenges ‘pilgrim donations only’ narrative

The ongoing controversy over the admission of Muslim students in the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME) on Tuesday got a new twist with the ruling National Conference (NC) claiming that the institute was not running alone with the donations of Vaishnodevi pilgrims, but was also being funded by the J&K government.

NC’s chief spokesman and MLA Tanvir Sadiq, while referring to the BJP leader Sunil Sharma, stated that when he talks of the “sentiment” of those who donate at Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine, “he conveniently ignores a key fact that the J&K government gives grant-in-aid to the university, and this medical college is affiliated with it. Rs 24 crore last year, Rs 28 crore this year”.

Advertisement

“This clearly proves the institution isn’t running on donations alone. And when public money is involved, every citizen of this UT has an equal right to be there – irrespective of religion or background,” Sadiq wrote on X.

He also posted photos of the budgetary grants to the Vaishnodevi University with which the medical college is affiliated.

Meanwhile, in a hard-hitting response to the NC and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s statement that the admissions to the SMVDIME cannot be faith-driven, former BJP MLC Girdhari Lal Raina described it as an attempt to cloak a one-sided and questionable admission process behind the rhetoric of “merit”.

Raina accused the NC and other Kashmir-centric parties of consistent double standards and a long-drawn design to deprive the Jammu region and non-Muslim minorities of their rightful space as equal, dignified and law-abiding citizens of the Union Territory. The current controversy, he said, is only the latest reflection of a mindset that has historically denied minorities space even in institutions created, funded, and nurtured by them.

Raina alleged that the NC “never applied the concept of merit when it came to Kashmiri Pandits and other minorities in Kashmir. This systematic exclusion led to marginalisation, discrimination, and eventually the ethnic cleansing of 1989–90”.

Rejecting the NC’s communal twist to the Vaishnodevi Medical College issue, Raina said; “The chief minister must check facts before expressing sectarian emotions. There are more than sufficient Muslim employees, including doctors, working in the SMVD University and the Shrine Board”.

If true secularism was needed anywhere, he said, it was in institutions like the Waqf Board, where mismanagement and appeasement politics have repeatedly created friction — including the recent desecration of the National Emblem at Hazratbal, despite government funding, he said.

Raina emphasised that “the Hindu community — a minority in J&K — deserves respect, dignity, and protection of its aspirations, not bullying and majoritarian authoritarianism”.

He urged the NC leadership to stop weaponizing “merit” for political gain and to correct the deep historical injustices it presided over, instead of repeating them under new slogans.