India
Girls Forced To Remove Bra At NEET Centre – 10 Updates On Big Controversy
The controversy emerged when the father of the 17-year-old girl told the media that his daughter, taking her first-ever NEET exam, had yet to recover from the "traumatic experience" of sitting for an over three-hour exam without a bra.
Allegations that girls were forced to remove their bra before taking the NEET medical entrance exam at Kerala’s Kollam on Sunday are snowballing with a state minister urging the Centre to take action.
Here are the top 10 points in this story:
- Three complaints have now been received by the police on students subjected to humiliating checks before the entrance exam. The National Testing Agency, however, denied the allegations of the girl whose father first went to the police.
- The complaint is “fictitious and filed with wrong intentions”, said the NEET exam centre superintendent in Kollam to the National Testing Agency.
- The controversy emerged on Monday when the father of the 17-year-old girl told the media that his daughter, taking her first-ever NEET exam, had yet to recover from the “traumatic experience” of sitting for an over three-hour exam without a bra.
- The father has alleged in his complaint that the girl was asked to remove her bra after the metal hooks beeped during a security check at the Mar Thoma Institute of Information Technology, the exam centre.
- “Is your future or innerwear big for you? Just remove it and don’t waste our time (sic),” the father’s complaint quoted security personnel as saying.
- The complaint also claimed that “90 per cent of female students had to remove their inners and keep them in a storeroom”.
- While the testing centre has denied the charge, the National Testing Agency said today that the “NEET dress code does not permit any such activity alleged by parent of candidate:”.
- Kerala Higher Education Minister R Bindu has written to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan seeking strong against the agency that allegedly forced the girls to take off their bra before allowing them entry into the exam hall. She expressed “dismay and shock” at what she called “naked assault on the dignity and honour of the girl students” who appeared for the NEET examination.
- “The shame and shock of this unexpected turn of events have affected the morale and composure of the students whose performance in the test was consequently affected,” Ms Bindu wrote, recommending strong, deterrent action. “I write to place on record that we take strong exception to such inhuman behaviour from an agency that has only been entrusted with the task of conducting the examination in a fair manner”, the minister said.
- The Kerala police has registered a case against those who carried out security checks and allegedly asked them to take off their underwear.
