A false story keeps spreading about students like me. 

Self-proclaimed campus activists insist that the Economically Weaker Sections category comes with a lower cutoff score, so students admitted through it must have worked less than those admitted on open merit. 

Nobody stops to ask why the cutoff sits lower to begin with. 

I want to answer that question, because I lived it.

Recently I watched a clip posted by an open-merit activist named Sahil Parray, discussing NEET admissions. 

He claimed candidates scoring above 600 marks got shut out of government medical colleges while reserved-category students got in with 300. 

His number is wrong, as last year’s boys’ cutoff under the open quota sat around 521, but the 300 figure was aimed squarely at EWS candidates. 

The message underneath his ‘mistake’ is the one that sticks: poor students, he implies, get seats they haven’t earned. 

That framing ignores a basic fact.

Only a small fraction of economically and socially disadvantaged students ever reach university at all.

That same framing now shadows Jammu and Kashmir’s plan to cut EWS reservation from 10 percent to 3 percent. 

Officials say the EWS population here is small. Many of us have asked for the survey or the household data behind that claim, and none has surfaced. 

Policies that decide who gets into medical school and who doesn’t should rest........

© Kashmir Observer