Bilkis Manzoor from central Kashmir’s Budgam neatly folded her white lab coat and packed it away along with her books, bedsheets and other belongings. She was set to become the first doctor in her family after joining the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME) in Katra. Now forced to return home, she says the hardest thing will be seeing her parents, who had sent her to college with much excitement and high hopes.
Under instructions from the staff at the institute to leave the campus by 2 pm on Friday, the first batch of MBBS students at the institute, including Bilkis, bid their tearful goodbyes as they began their journeys back home.
Earlier this week, the National Medical Commission withdrew the Letter of Permission (LoP) that it had granted to SMVDIME to run an MBBS course for the 2025-26 academic session, citing serious deficiencies in its infrastructure. The NMC had initially allowed the college to conduct the MBBS course, admitting 50 students, in September last year, after it issued an LoP based on a detailed inspection by its team of experts. Out of the 50 students, 44 selected on the basis of their NEET rankings were Muslim, prompting a protest by pro-RSS and pro-BJP groups.
Bilkis could not get a train ticket to Budgam, so she had to find another mode of transport. About her time at the institute, she says, “We joined in the first week of November. For the first 15 days, everyone was together for the foundational course. Towards the end, we started hearing of protests around admissions at the college.”
At that time, however, there was no concern inside the campus premises, she remembers, saying, “We thought that it was a genuine concern, and that if there were students who felt they should have been given seats, then they would be accommodated in the next admission cycle.” It was only after the protests reached the college gates that students started feeling the pressure.
Bilkis studied in a government school in her village and went to public libraries to prepare for medical entrance exams. It was after her second attempt at NEET in 2025 that she was offered a seat at SMVDIME.
“I had never left home before this. I really wanted to be a doctor, and my parents saw how hard I had worked, so they let me move to Jammu,” she says. Moving to a different city, even though it’s in J&K, was a “big deal” for her.
‘Craze about medicine’
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Her classmate, Saqib Farooq, from Kulgam in South Kashmir, echoes the disappointment. Also a first-generation medical student, he says the day he cleared NEET was a day of “unmatched joy” at his household.
“There is a craze about medicine. The respect the profession brings to the whole family… I was very happy,” he says. While going to a government medical college would have been cheaper, his parents, like those of many in the institute, did everything they could to help their children achieve their dreams. He says his parents put together the Rs 4.5 lakh per annum fees, with some difficulty.
Another student, who did not want to be identified, says he cleared NEET in his fourth attempt and was finally able to “breathe properly” after years of studying. “Now, I am going back home in shock and uncertainty. I don’t know when I will find admission to another college.”
According to the government, the students, most of them from different parts of the Valley, will be accommodated in other government institutions within the Union Territory in supernumerary seats. However, many students say that the academic session at SMVDIME had already started two months late, and “if it takes another month or two to get admissions, we will be too far behind in the first year itself”.
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J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said on Thursday that accommodating 50 students in other medical colleges is “not a problem for the government”, but demanded that someone be held accountable for the damage that will be caused to the careers of future students who may miss out on seats due to the closure of this medical college.
‘We were better off’
The only Muslim girl from Jammu in the batch, Misbah, also wore a look of disappointment while returning home on Friday. “It was hard to leave the college. The teachers took a real interest in our well-being, and they were perhaps more upset than us to see us leave,” she says.
She also points out that the deficiencies cited in cancelling admissions at the college came as a shock to students. “Some of my friends with whom I was preparing for NEET ended up in different colleges, and we used to compare the facilities. I felt like students here were better off than a lot of them (who got admission elsewhere).”
The executive director of the institute addressed students before they left. “He said the whole episode was unfortunate and wished us luck for our future,” Misbah says.
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While protests about regional and religious divide reached campus gates, she says, “Inside our hostels and classrooms, there was no conversation on anything other than studies. Medicine is a rigorous course, and it deserves undivided attention from every student.”
“We were confident of our seats because we came here after qualifying for a national exam. We had never imagined that we would be returning home with cancelled admissions in less than six months,” she says.
Manit, a Hindu student from Udhampur in Jammu, calls the decision to cancel admissions at the college “reckless”. He says that even when social media was abuzz with discussions on the demography in the classroom, “no one within the premises discussed anyone’s religion”.
He says that while they are reassured by the CM’s statements regarding adjusting students in nearby colleges, “We are lagging and it will take us a while to cope.”
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He says that any argument with regard to a lack of facilities or infrastructure at the college is “uninformed” since “we had every facility required to complete our course”.
