Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Thursday asked the BJP legislators pressing for a National Law University in Jammu to clarify whether they would allow Muslim students to study there if they dominated the merit list, recalling that a medical college had recently been shut on similar grounds.
Omar urged the BJP MLAs to seek minority status for the closed medical college, which would allow Hindus to get a fairly large share of seats, arguing the money spent on it would not go to waste and the doctors, irrespective of their faith, would not differentiate patients from different religions.
The BJP legislators did not reply to Omar’s question, although they echoed the call for an NLU in both Kashmir and Jammu. The BJP had earlier favoured an NLU in Jammu but made amends in its call after facing criticism that there were no protests in the Valley when Jammu got both an IIT and an IIM in 2016.
Omar on Thursday framed the question as a moral issue, asking whether Muslims will be allowed to study if Jammu gets an NLU. He said that when BJP legislators have nothing to offer, they talk about discrimination against Jammu.
“Discrimination happened when you shut down a medical college. I am surprised, Mr Speaker, that in other states people struggle for a medical college. But these people got a medical college closed only because a majority of students were Muslims,” he said, referring to the closure of Mata Vaishno Devi Medical College where Muslim students had dominated the merit list.
“...Now they say give us a National Law University. NLU admissions are also made on merit. How can I accept that if the majority of students were Muslims in Jammu’s NLU, they will (not) get it closed and distribute sweets and celebrate (the way it happened when the medical college was shut)?” Omar said.