- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
A TEENAGE student in the northeastern Indian state of Assam faced the “most humiliating experience” of her life when she appeared for an entrance test. Reason? She was made to cover her leg with a curtain after she appeared for the examination in shorts.
Jublee Tamuli and her father travelled to Tezpur, the venue of the entrance examination of Assam Agricultural University (AAU), from their hometown Biswanath Charali, located about 70 kilometres (43.4 miles) away, on Wednesday (15) morning.
Tamuli told Indian daily The Indian Express that there was no problem when she entered the venue — Girijananda Chowdhury Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. It all started in the examination hall where the invigilator objected to her dress.
“While the security guards let me enter the premises, I was stopped by the invigilator at the exam hall. He said I would not be allowed to enter wearing shorts,” she told the Express.
She said the examination’s admit card had no mention of any dress code.
“A few days ago, I appeared for the NEET exam in the same town, wearing the exact same attire – nothing happened. Neither does the AAU have any rules about shorts, nor was there anything mentioned in the admit card. How was I to know?” she asked.
But the invigilator was not ready to hear her and she was told she could not sit for the exam. Tamuli was in tears and she rushed to her father who was waiting outside.
“Finally, the Controller of Exams said I could take the exam, if a pair of pants could be arranged. So my father rushed to the market to buy a pair,” she said.
But as her father went to the market, which is located around eight kilometres away, Tamuli was losing precious time. However, by the time her father got a trouser, he was told that the solution had been found – his daughter had been given a curtain to cover her legs!
“They said that if I lacked basic common sense, how would I succeed in life,” Tamuli, who felt extremely harassed and humiliated, said, adding that it was “completely unfair”. “They did not check for Covid protocols, masks or even temperature…but they checked for shorts,” she said.
Calling it the “most humiliating experience of my life”, Tamuli said she plans to write to Assam education minister Ranoj Pegu about the episode.
The woman said everybody had their own “comfort zone”.
“If a boy wears a vest, no one says anything. Some men go around bare-bodied in public, and no one says a thing. But if a girl wears a pair of shorts, then people point fingers,” she said.
While Tamuli managed to complete her test, her experience with the curtain on her legs was “stressful”. She said it kept slipping off while she was writing the examination.
Dr Abdul Baquee Ahmed, principal of the institute where the examination was held, said he was not present in college but “aware that such an incident had happened.”
“We do not have anything to do with the exam – our college was just hired as a venue for the exam. Even the invigilator in question was from outside. There is no rule about shorts, but during an exam, it is important that decorum be maintained. Parents should also know better,” the Express quoted him as saying.
