Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Thursday called for responsibility to be fixed in case there were deficiencies in the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME), saying that his government would accommodate students from the institute in medical colleges nearer to their homes in the Union Territory.
“You should ask questions to the university (Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University) and its office bearers, right from top to the bottom, that if you had set up a medical college, why did it not pass the (National Medical Commission) inspection,” he told journalists in Jammu.
The National Medical Commission (NMC) late on Tuesday withdrew permission to run an MBBS course at SMVDIME. The NMC cited serious deficiencies in the institute’s infrastructure, including faculty strength and clinical material, among other things. The action also came amid protests by the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Sangarsh Samiti, a group of nearly 60 pro-RSS and pro-BJP organisations, which have been opposing admission of Muslim students at the institute. Of the 50 students in the college’s first-ever MBBS batch, 44 were Muslim.
On Thursday, when journalists drew his attention to BJP leaders’ allegations that the university did not maintain standards, Chief Minister Abdullah, without naming J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, said, “Then it is all the more a serious matter. Who heads the university and who is its Chancellor?… You should ask questions to him too.” The Lieutenant Governor is the chancellor of the university.
“I have asked the Health Minister (Sakina Itoo) to immediate intervene in the matter and ensure that students affected by the withdrawal of permission to the Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME) are adjusted in government medical colleges nearer their homes so that they can continue their studies and become doctors to serve the people,” he said. He expressed regret that “while people elsewhere in the country fight to get a medical college, here a struggle was launched to shut down one that we already have”.
He also had a dig at the NMC, asking who conducted the inspection of the medical college before a Letter of Permission (LoP) was issued to it in the first place.
Pointing out that accommodating 50 students in other medical colleges is not a problem for the government, he said that someone should be held responsible and action taken against them for the damage that will be caused to the career of the students in future due to the closure of this medical college.
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‘What is this happiness about?’
On Wednesday evening in Samba, the Chief Minister criticised the Sangarsh Samiti leaders and the BJP, alleging that they celebrated the NMC decision, and asking, “What is this happiness about?”
“If destroying children’s futures gives you happiness, then burst firecrackers,” he said, adding, “This time, out of 50 seats, 40 have gone to Kashmir. After one or two years, these 50 seats would have become 400 seats and out of those 400 seats, possibly 200 or 250 children would have been from Jammu.”
“Tomorrow, those children will not get medical college seats because you got the entire college shut down in the name of religion,” Abdullah said.
Responding to Omar Abdullah’s remarks, BJP’s J&K president, Sat Sharma, said the party did not hold any celebrations over the NMC decision and said that the commission took the decision after it found deficiencies in infrastructure. He accused the Chief Minister of politicising admissions in the medical college, allegedly by giving them a communal colour to divert people’s attention from the failure of his government.
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Meanwhile, Manish Sahni, president of the J&K unit of Shiv Sena, decried the decision to withdraw permission that had earlier been issued to the medical college to run an MBBS course. While Sena activists had been agitating to move Muslim students out of SMVDIME, Sahni said that some solution should have been found for this issue, but instead, the Centre ended the issue itself.
J&K AAP leader Amit Kapoor also criticised the celebrations by the Sangarsh Samiti over the cancellation of permission to SMVDIME. “Some people are distributing sweets when the college is closed. Were there no Hindus in the college? Today, I am forced to say that Jammu is finished,” he said.
J&K Congress chief spokesperson Ravinder Sharma asked the BJP to explain “what Jammu achieved with the closure of a premier medical institute named after holy Mata Vaishno Devi ji”.
“Just to cover up the failure of the Health Ministry headed by J P Nadda, the Jammu region is made to suffer instead of changing the norms” regarding admissions, he said.
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J&K’s ruling National Conference’s provincial president, Rattan Lal Gupta, said that SMVDIME, once projected as a flagship institution for the Jammu region, has now become a symbol of the BJP’s anti-Jammu and anti-youth approach, exposing its hollow and divisive politics. He said, “Withdrawal of permission is not a technical lapse, but a systematic failure reflecting the L-G administration’s inability to ensure basic compliance with MCI norms despite BJP’s control at the Centre.”
Budhal MLA Javed Iqbal Choudhary described the de-recognition of SMVDIME as “a dangerous and shameful reality” if the action was taken merely because Muslim students were selected on merit. “When merit becomes unacceptable, the country must seriously introspect about the direction it is moving in,” he said.
While the NMC has said its team found deficiencies in infrastructure during a surprise inspection earlier this month, officials from the medical college contested this claim, calling the inspection report a “farce” and “contrary to facts”. They alleged that the inspection team had visited the college premises with a pre-determined mind to close it down to assuage the protesters who opposed the admission of Muslim students from Kashmir, who got into the institute on the basis of their score in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.
