‘Migration Only Solution’: Kuki MBBS Students Debarred From Exams Amid Violence – The Quint

“I took four years of coaching to clear NEET [National Eligibility cum Entrance Test]. Now, if I can’t sit for my first-year MBBS exams, all that effort will be for nothing,” Chingthianhoih, a first-year MBBS student at the Region Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Manipur’s Imphal tells The Quint.

Chingyhianhoiw is among the 27 Kuki-Zo medical students from RIMS who were not allowed to appear for their first-year final exams that began on Tuesday, 21 November.

After violence erupted in Manipur on 3 May, Chingthianhoih – like the other Kuki-Zo students studying in the three Imphal-based medical colleges, namely RIMS, Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences (JNIMS), and the privately owned Shija Academy of Health Sciences (SAHS) – fled from the capital. There are at least 121 of them.

“Initially, I took shelter in a CRPF camp. My parents borrowed money from friends and relatives and booked us flight tickets from Imphal to Pune. I did not accompany them. Instead, I flew to Guwahati first, and then to Aizawl, and from Aizawl to Lamka [Churachandpur district] by road,” Chingthianhoih recounts.

However, even as the classes resumed in the medical colleges later that month [by 27 May], the Kuki-Zo students could not return. “It is too dangerous for us to return to Imphal, so we could not go back to our colleges,” she adds.