New Delhi, June 29: Union minister Maneka Gandhi has asked the HRD ministry to look into a complaint by a woman who was asked to remove all her jewellery — including a toe ring that symbolised her marital status — before she was allowed to sit for an examination for government jobs.
In a letter to Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, Delhi resident Rita Verma said she was made to remove her toe ring, worn by married women, bangles and even her ‘bindi’ before she could appear for the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board examination here June 25.
“Officers there asked me to break my bangles if required if I wanted to enter the school premises,” she wrote. She was forced to keep all her ‘suhaag’ (marital) items outside the school where the examination was being held, she wrote in her June 27 letter.
Maneka Gandhi, outraged at what she said was a “bizarre case”, has now shot off a letter to Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, asking him to draw up “standard operating procedures” to deal with such cases.
“Before the school board exams were conducted this year, apparently very strict instructions were issued regarding prevention of cheating during the exams. A large number of students were put to harassment which included body search and stripping in certain incidents,” Maneka Gandhi said in her letter, also dated June 27.
Though she agreed that some students used high-tech gadgets to cheat, “the anti-cheating protocols deployed should not result in harassment”, Maneka contended. In May this year, a woman who had appeared for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for admission to medical courses was asked to remove her bra by the frisking staff at an examination centre in Kovappuram in Kerala before being allowed to sit for the test.
In another case in March, officials allegedly strip- searched women students appearing for a matriculation examination at a school in Patna. Maneka went on to recount Verma’s woes in her letter to the HRD minister, saying that the candidate found her jewellery missing after the exam. When her officials contacted the school authorities, they said metallic objects were not allowed inside the examination hall, which was why the candidate was asked to remove her jewellery. “It is the responsibility of the school to ensure that they do not put the students/candidates to any harassment on account of their own interpretation of the instructions issued to prevent cheating,” she said in her letter. PTI