Row over admission to Muslims: Medical commission withdraws MBBS nod to Jammu
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New Delhi: The National Medical Commission (NMC) on Tuesday has withdrawn the Letter of Permission (LoP) given to Jammu and Kashmir’s Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence to conduct MBBS course, amid controversy over admission of Muslim students, Hindustan Times reported.
The LoP was granted to run MBBS course with 50 seats for the academic year 2025-26 with reports saying that 46 Muslim students were given admission for the maiden batch at the medical college.
A letter issued by NMC said that it had received application for establishing a new medical college, named Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence, adding that ‘following the due process, including scrutiny of documents and physical inspection by expert assessors, the MARB granted a LoP to the said college. Accordingly, admissions were made by the institution’.
The letter further said that the NMC however has received multiple complaints over the past two weeks including ‘serious allegations against the institution, inter alia, regarding inadequate infrastructure, insufficient clinical material, shortage of qualified full-time teaching faculty and inadequate number of resident doctors.’
‘The MARB decided to conduct a surprise physical inspection to verify the veracity of the complaints. The assessment report submitted by the team established that the complaints were true and substantiated. The deficiencies observed were gross and substantial in nature,’ it stated.
Pointing to the situation the letter said ‘Continuation of the institution under such circumstances would have seriously jeopardised the quality of medical education and adversely affected the academic interests of the students.’
Given this, the medical commission said that the state/UT authorities have been authorised to accommodate the students in other medical institutions within the union territory ‘as supernumerary seats, in accordance with applicable norms,’ to protect the interests of the students already admitted for the academic year 2025–26.
The decision as pointed out earlier follows the recent controversy over granting admission to 46 Muslim students out of the total 50 with local Hindu outfits demanding reservation for Hindu candidates claiming that the college was set up and largely run from donations of Hindu devotees at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi shrine.
Accusing the BJP government of communal policies on education, sports and food habits, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah urged it to accommodate the students to other medical colleges and close the newly opened medical college to end the controversy.