SC Category Candidate Tops AIIMS Super Speciality Merit List; Four OBC Candidates in Top Ten

The merit list is a source of pride for students from marginalised communities often wrongly tarnished for making it through ‘low cut-offs’.

The Wire Staff

The merit list is a source of pride for students from marginalised communities often wrongly tarnished for making it through ‘low cut-offs’.

sc category candidate tops aiims super speciality merit list four obc candidates in top ten

AIIMS, Delhi. Photo: PTI

New Delhi: The list for MD and super speciality seats for the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMSs) and other top medical institutions is out and the top rank has gone to a candidate from the Scheduled Caste (SC) category. There are four students from the OBC category among the top ten. In all, five students from the ‘reserved’ category have made it to the overall topper list of ten.

This covers the most prestigious public medical schools for the MD and super speciality examination, conducted under the Institute of National Importance–Combined Entrance Test. This is the result of the first round of seat allocation for the MD/MS/MCh (six years)/DM (six years)/MDS courses.

The topping of this prestigious, super-speciality list in India's premium public institute for medicine by a Dalit candidate is significant for the twisted debate on ‘merit’ versus ‘reservations’, where to have quotas for socially marginalised groups is seen as a downer for ‘merit’.

Increasingly, students from the so-called ‘reserved’ categories have been slaying the total list, where ‘general category’ or ‘unreserved’ is the reference for that section of the population which is non-SC, non-ST, non-OBC and non-PWD.

This section, before the introduction of the controversial Economically Weaker Section category or EWS, would encompass broadly 15% of the population on estimates extrapolated from the 1931 caste census and subsequent socio-economic and caste survey reports in various states including the Bihar caste survey.

This year, the census 2027, which is meant to be a caste one – and independent India's first – is yet to start asking questions on caste or reveal its methodology.

A move to whip up sentiment to “abolish reservations” has also been active on social media, which is yet to really get traction, but is seen as a counter to the more universal move by city and rural youth in India to collectively push for more equity, fairness and a better examination system which caters to the student community as a whole.

AIIMS का रिजल्ट आया है, एक दलित लड़के ने टॉप किया है। टॉप १० में आधे से ज़्यादा ओबीसी है।
वो कहा गए जो कहते थे, एससी/ओबीसी वाले -40 में डॉक्टर बनते है। 👇 pic.twitter.com/j1iRkVB8Nx
— Dr. Prince Verma (@PrinceV93789344) August 5, 2026

In AIIMS New Delhi Medical Recruitment for Senior Resident( SR) and Senior Demonstrator(SD) Positions, shows that it is the SC,ST,OBCs who now have started taking the lead in occuping the General Seats.
You can see
Rank 1- SC
Rank 2- OBC
Rank 3- OBC
Rank 6- SC
Rank 7-SC
Rank… pic.twitter.com/LawsM4l6TX
— Nethrapal (@nethrapal) August 5, 2026

As students from marginalised communities celebrated the AIIMS topper being a candidate from the SC category, the replies on most accounts bear testament to the spite and bitterness that conversation about caste, when initiated by the marginalised, invokes.

This article went live on August fifth, two thousand twenty six, at thirty-two minutes past ten at night.

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