Vaishnodevi medical college admissions ignite protests as Sangh outfits target list dominated by Muslim students

With 90% of seats in the inaugural batch going to Kashmir-based Muslim candidates, right-wing groups demand the list be scrapped and seats reserved for Hindus — even as officials insist admissions strictly followed NEET and NMC norms.

Outfits linked to the Sangh Parivar have launched fierce protests across the Jammu region after the Shri Mata Vaishnodevi Institute of Medical Excellence admitted its first batch of students — 90% of whom are Muslims from Kashmir.

The college, built with donations from devotees of the Vaishno Devi shrine, has become the centre of a polarising debate, with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal accusing authorities of allowing the institution to be “dominated” by Muslim students.

BJP MLA from Udhampur, R S Pathania, has joined the protests, arguing that a shrine-funded institution should reserve a majority of seats for Hindus.

The flashpoint emerged after the J&K Board of Professional Entrance Examinations (JKBOPEE) released the merit list of 50 students for the college’s first session. Of them, 42 were from Kashmir and eight from Jammu. Thirty-six Kashmir-based students and three from Jammu have already taken admission.

Demonstrations erupted outside the medical institute in Katra, during which right-wing groups burned the effigy of the CEO of the Vaishno Devi Shrine Board. The VHP’s Jammu and Kashmir president Rajesh Gupta demanded that admissions for the 2025–26 session be halted and that the college “correct its mistake” by ensuring that most students selected next year are Hindus. The current selection, he alleged, was “a conspiracy to Islamize the medical college”.

Bajrang Dal’s state chief Rakesh Bajrangi accused the JKBOPEE of bias and argued that admissions should have been taken from the central NEET pool instead of the UT quota, as the college was built through nationwide donations from pilgrims.

“We have no objection to Kashmiris taking admission anywhere else, but seats must be reserved for Hindus here because the college was built from shrine donations,” Bajrangi said.

Supporting the demand, BJP MLA Pathania claimed that even minority institutions receiving government funding reserve seats for the community they represent: “Here, the institute does not take a single rupee from the government.

Donations from Vaishno Devi pilgrims sustain it. So seats should be reserved for Hindu students, because the matter concerns the faith of millions.”

However, officials involved in the admission process have pushed back, stating that everything was conducted “strictly as per the National Medical Council (NMC) guidelines”. Under current rules, the institute is not classified as a minority institution, meaning reservations for a particular religion are not permissible.

Admissions across the 1,685 MBBS seats in Jammu and Kashmir’s 13 medical colleges are mandated to be done on NEET rankings, with 85 percent seats reserved for UT domiciles and 15% open to candidates nationwide. For the Vaishnodevi college, admissions began late — after NMC approval on September 8 — and the merit list was prepared during a third counselling round.

JKBOPEE had shortlisted 5,865 UT domicile candidates for the 13 medical colleges; 2,000 were called for counselling. Over 70% in that merit pool were Muslims. Officials noted that this trend is not new: in recent years, more students from Kashmir have consistently secured seats in Jammu-based medical colleges due to higher merit scores, even though Jammu technically has more seats (900) than Kashmir (675). In engineering, the pattern is reversed, with more Jammu students enrolling.

Sources said the Shrine Board earlier sought permission from the Centre and NMC to admit students via the central NEET pool, but the request was rejected since such admissions are restricted to government institutions, institutes of national importance, or deemed universities.

National Conference leader Rattan Lal Gupta said the controversy stems from the Shrine Board’s failure to seek minority status while applying to establish the medical college. “Without that status, JKBOPEE had no option except to admit students strictly by merit,” he said. “Most of the top scorers happened to be Muslims — that’s the entire story.”

As protests continue, the standoff has set the stage for a politically and communally charged battle — one that pits a demand for religion-based allocation of professional education seats against mandatory national eligibility norms.